Crane #4 is a more abstract and stylised addition to the series. Rather than using more sketchy techniques, I've redrawn this crane and removed noise to give it a crisper look. The unique shape of this crane still grounds it in the Gdansk shipyards, but the stark contrast to the blank paper gives it a greater sense of abstraction. Arranging the handcut shapes for the load was a challenge and I focused on absolute precision with this print. Lining up these angles after creating them by hand was tricky, but I think rewarding and it furthers my study on block colours and shapes capturing our efforts to order the chaos of urban construction.
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Crane #3 is based on some of the ship container cranes in Gdansk. I love these skeletal forms, like ancient monsters hulking over the landscape. Continuing my efforts to make every series of prints unique, I hand-cut the background stencils and arranged them by hand before exposing and printing. The shade of yellow took the most amount of work on this print, as it was important to keep it bright enough to foreground the cranes, yet dark enough to not look like bizarre spotlights. Keeping these shapes abstract has been a good vein to explore and I'm going to use them to continue to explore the disconnect of our expectations of urban landscape and the changes that are caused by construction equipment. At the end of last year I was asked to curate a space as part of UCL Art Museum's Vault exhibition. It was a real pleasure working with the fantastic staff there and delving into the archive of work of the Slade School of Fine Art. I focused my cabinet on printmakers and brought together pieces from different decades in the 20th century to think about how mechanical reproduction of art works alongside the changing faces of urban life. In reaction to these pieces from various printmakers, including the master Eduardo Paolozzi, I created my own new piece. Crane #2 is based on a construction site in Bloomsbury, London. It rotates around an axis and is underpinned by abstract shapes which cut into each other. With this piece I attempted to capture a sense of the inevitability of change in the urban environment and how we as citizens and artists, attempt to force order upon this. I used hand-cut stencils for the piece along with the sharp, skeleton like image of the crane and, in doing so, I hope that I have brought into focus the contrast between the order we try to mentally impose on urban life and the reality that gentrification and the economy are the real masters of this space. This was a really satisfying project and I'm glad that the cabinet and my own contribution managed to spark a few thoughts and ideas, and brought together fascinating pieces from the Art Museum collection. |
Tadhg CaffreyI'm an Irish printmaker, living in North London and focusing on urban landscape, construction and abstract geometry. My first name sounds like "tiger" without the last bit.
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