Traces

Finally, it has arrived, the best part of being a lecturer. The summer holidays! Protracted time for my own creative practice.

First, a meeting with Jim over cake and coffee to discuss our forthcoming show. The title, our joint statement, timings, wall space. It is all beginning to feel a bit more real.
​
Next day, the restoration of an antique contact printer which has now been fitted with a UV light source along with the bathroom being converted into a part-time darkroom for argyrotype production. Nuanced sepia tones in sympathy with the showcase theme. This iron-based silver alternative printing process being one part of several employed methodologies, for I have also been painting, sepia toning fibre based photographs and plan to make some experimental lumen prints. I have made lumen prints before, accidentally in the darkroom whilst making pinhole images. The scraps of trimmed down photographic paper revealing the graphic images of the pair of scissors left on them. Unbeknownst to me at the time, these photograms can be saved. To save the image the normal process would be to place an exposed photogram into developer, stop bath and fixer. If you did this with lumen prints though the paper would go completely black as they have been grossly overexposed. Instead, these eerie strange coloured prints are just placed in the fixer. Reading up I have discovered that expired paper is great for this process, rendering unpredictable results. I am excited to report that over the years I have amassed a stock!

© Jim Boon & Oonagh Devoy

​'Traces' - Eden Court Theatre, 30th October to 24th November

'Traces' is a collaborative exhibition featuring the work of artists Jim Boon and Oonagh Devoy.

The work explores themes common to both artists which centre on how landscape, both rural and urban, coastal and hinterland, are in perpetual flux due to causes like time, elemental forces, or human and animal activity. These forces serve to continually modify the environment in an imperceptibly subtle way.

The exhibition features paintings and photographs inspired by this shared narrative and is selected to reflect a compatible and complimentary aesthetic.
​