Concertina: making an abstract structure

This piece of work evolved from the card board box prints I have been producing.

As a new practice for me printing the boxes was a process of trial and error in terms of producing a print that I was happy with both in terms of colour, texture, distribution of ink and composition.

I produced a lot of prints that had lots of interesting textures and colours that I loved, however there were parts that were not printed consistently or the composition or colour was wrong. I used this as a learning curve and got better at reproducing certain desirable effects, for example I really like the multi textured/ coloured pastel prints that were achieved once the card board had been used many times and had a build up of colour, rolling it through the press at the highest pressure possible when almost dry, consistently produced this result.

The prints that were not quite right still had lots of beautiful parts on them. I was entering work into a post card exhibition so this gave me the idea to cut parts the prints into post card size.

I've already explained the source of the concertina idea in a previous post and I have already made a mock up. This is the finished work. I made the structure from thick mount board cut into post card size pieces and attached with masking tape on alternate sides on each piece to allow for the concertina fold. I added the selected parts of the prints to both sides of the boards with PVA glue and applied the gold leaf as the last part of the process, covering any white areas of the print and also covering the folds.

I took some practical techniques from an online book binding course I did last year and covered the research in a previous project. In this project I was able now to put it to some use.

The intention of the sculpture in terms of the brief, is an abstraction and evolution from the structural box prints. Its about texture, it represents the peeling paint of old building, the passing of time, the beauty of decay. The gold leaf represents the value and richness of history in these old buildings and the town itself, the concertina represents structure and uniformity of the buildings, a typical row of terraced houses, the zig zag structure enables us to see many perspectives and angular quality of building structure. It also folds up solid into a book, this work is a visual story ,a picture book. I'm aware that its very abstracted and on its own without explanation, I wonder how it may be interpreted.As it stands, alone, visually, I'm very happy with it, it has a decorative quality to it that is nice to look at. I think when displayed along side the box prints as a collection of work it becomes more coherent in terms of communication and evolution of the theme