Documentation | Lizzie Latham

Relic 'Egg'

Jan 17

Updated: Jan 28

I wanted to create a print from the photographs in my collage relics series; a print which could in some way be displayed as an object. In thinking about the print as a relic, or object, I decided that I wanted to cut the plate into the oval shape of the collage objects with the idea of the 'relic window', the glass-fronted section of the reliquary, would be the only part of the print.

Working out timings for each stage of the etching process

Brian used the plate cutter to remove about 90% of the zinc plate for me so that I only had to spend some time filing the edge into the rounded oval form. As before, I wanted to create the same dark aquatint effect with glints of light, so I polished the plate as much as possible before applying the aquatint.

Next, I applied Rhinds to stop out the white highlights, then etched each stage, finishing with what I hoped would be a deep black crescent shape and shadow on the rock.

As with my previous aquatints, I intended to work detailed highlights into the plate by burnishing, almost like a mezzotint.

I was really excited about the print; the rock has just enough realism to make it look like it's floating above the abstract form of the oval. I was so pleased with the timings of my aquatint as I achieved the background darkness I wanted, whilst still allowing the rock and crescent shape to have their own sense of depth. I will bring out the dots and the fine lines even more by burnishing the plate.

Relic Egg, Aquatint on Somerset paper, 29 x 42cm, 2024

Relic Egg, Aquatint on Shoji paper, 29 x 42cm, 2024

I had the idea of printing the egg onto a photograph on Shoji paper, so I did a test print on a blank sheet of Shoji. Interestingly, the print lacks the solid depth of the version on Somerset, and the paper has puckered even under the drying mats. It may be that the paper dried too much during the printing process so wouldn't fully flatten even under the weighted drying mat. I will try to print it again to see if I can get a better print.

I used a ball burnisher and scraper to lightly burnish the plate to bring up more of the line texture and to illuminate the sequins surrounding the central stone.

Skin prints and human presence/absence within the artwork

Jan 16

Updated: Jan 28

Detachment from the body

I was struck when I read some quotes by the artist Paul Thek, who said that he created his series of sculptures Technological Relics or 'meat pieces' because of his need to process the 'intransigent stuff' of the human body. In the book 'The Artist's Artist', which records Thek's reflections over his short life, Thek says: ‘I choose this subject-matter because it violates my sensibilities, but thats not the same as shock. I work with it to detach myself from it… its not sex, its flesh, something in a spasm’ (H, Falkenberg. P, Weibel. 2009).

I know, to an extent, that I have a similar fearful dissociation with the body; specifically my own body. As much as I find art-making a necessary part of my life, I feel that I cannot directly tackle this detachment in my work. I have tried, and it seems to pull me up short with all of its associative anxieties; it stalls me. The fulfilment I gain from being an artist is through perhaps using materials as a mediation between myself and my body, or my body and the world.

Phenomenology and Embodied Pedagogy

In Phenomenology, there is an emphasis on understanding ourselves in and through the world. We are not disembodied minds; there is no 'inner self'; we cannot understand ourselves as a subject apart from our body. In this sense, the way we inhabit the world must be through our body; our body oriented within space.

I want the body/my body to be part of my artwork; not explicitly, but I want there to be a presence of the body, an awareness that amongst the things that I am making, there is a connection to the body. When I did my PGCE and trained to be an art teacher, my tutor Tara Page was working on a thesis about 'embodied pedagogy' which focused on learning through our bodily interaction with matter. Her ideas are very important to my personal understanding of art pedagogy, and although I have come to the Masters as an artist, in some ways breaking free of the teaching (for now), I think Embodied and Material Pedagogy is connected to this need for there to be a presence of the body within the work.

These are some contrasting ideas I have been considering:

connected (to the world, to the body)

disconnected (to the world, to the body)

attached

detached

presence

absence

tethered (to the world)

untethered (to the world)

material

immaterial

Body Prints

I imagined hand-hammering a sphere of zinc or copper in two halves, then deeply etching a design into its outer surface, similar to the aluminium block I had created years before. Once etched, I would bond the two halves together to create a hollow etched sphere which would become a printing/press object which could be inked and rolled or pressed onto a surface.

A sphere, because I was once told that I seem to hold emotions and anxieties tightly like a ball, and it felt to be very true, as if those feelings were being stored externally from my body. I am very interested, even fearful, of the mind disconnecting with the body. To me, it is associated with the words listed above.

Hand-hammered titanium bowls, artist unknown

As I considered the idea, I wanted to see the effect of the aluminium block on my skin, so I pressed all of my body weight into my hand onto the metal relief and then recorded the immediate impressions. The act of doing it felt quite self-punishing and unpleasant. I tried to print my torso area by lying on the metal plate, but I couldn't get enough direct weight or pressure to emboss the skin. Embossed skin looks like branded skin. Though so easy and effective to indent, skin pops back out again like memory foam, and whatever physical trace is gone after a short while.

I created these edits on Photoshop so that I could view the skin prints more as...prints. The colour choice was instinctive but perhaps puts the photographs within the same conversation as some of my other works.

In thinking about Phenomenology and the body in space, I have been considering how the physical world acts as a stabilising, tethering presence. If we feel untethered, absent, disassociated from the world we can reach out and grasp a solid surface or thing. In doing so, we can orient ourselves in relation to the world and we can press down onto it to feel our own weightedness, our push on the world, and feel it pushing back to steady us.

Stabilising print, Indian ink on cartridge paper, 2024

'The Jolt'

Written in 1948, TS Eliot's play The Cocktail Party revolves around a love triangle played out over a dinner party. One of the characters speaks about his wife suddenly disappearing from his life. The character who know only as Uninvited Guest replies:

Extract from 'The Cocktail Party' by T S Eliot

Eliot's description of 'the jolt' has inspired me since I first read this play. The description of someone walking down stairs and finding 'one step more than your feet expected and you come down with a jolt'. The 'jolt' is realisation that one's body is an object. Our experience is so contained within our own heads that occasionally something happens that reminds us, with a 'jolt', that we are a physical body.

I think the 'jolt' is most uncannily felt when you expect there to be another step and there isn't one. For a second, the ground seems to leap up and we feel like a piece of meat, our proprioception completely thrown.

The artist Paul Thek described the body as 'intransigent' because of its unrelenting, undeniable always-there-ness. I am interested in the phenomenological sense of body orientation and body dis-orientation and how this correlates with inner, mind-experience. To repeat a quote by Paul Thek: ‘I choose this subject-matter because it violates my sensibilities , but that's not the same as shock. I work with it to detach myself from it… its not sex, its flesh, something in a spasm’. Thek's work intentionally confronts the 'intransigent' body in all of its meaty grotesque form because in doing so he is able to 'detach' himself from its horrors and, significantly, the horrors of the Vietnam War.

Porcelain, considering the frame

Jan 15

Updated: Jan 28

The reliquary incribed 'EX CARNE S. CAROLI BORROMEI' fascinates me because of its unusual spiky frame. I have been considering framing devices since reading Cynthia Hahn's book 'The Reliquary Effect' and considering the reliquary as a framing device or as Hahn writes: 'enframement by means of a container' (Hahn, 2017 p. 8).

I created the frame from a rolled slab of porcelain clay. I chose porcelain because I liked the idea of it being white on firing; a blank canvas from which to decide on its next steps.

In considering the frame of the artwork as the 'reliquary', the containing device, I have been seeking artists who create works which attribute their form, and, to a great extent, their meaning, to the frame.

American artist Nina Hartmann's framing devices dictate the form of her mixed media works and most certainly dictate how we view the combined photographs and sculptures

Hartmann's work is both personal and political; in the way that politics is personal. Her images are often taken from government leaflets, message boards and many other official and un-official sources of information. Manipulated through AI, she then works to preserve them within framing devices which each have their own symbolic shape. In an interview for Cultured Magazine, Hartmann notes: 'So many of the shapes are in conversation with each other in some way, they might be a negative or inverted version of another piece. The body of work starts to function as its own unique system, with each shape working like a letter in an alphabet' (Hartmann, 2023). I like the idea that eventually I will be able to create a body of work in which each element seems to be in conversation with each other. Hartmann's work leads me to consider methods of display and how the print might take on the shape of its frame or container, or even environmnent.

I spoke to the artist Natalia Mustafa at Woolwich Print Fair this year about her piece Window and Cloud which was part of a larger installation of sculptural works.

I was inspired by the way the aluminium squares frame the photo etchings to the point of blocking all but a small strip of window which makes us peer in at the works.

I think the piece would be much better if the prints in their metal were hung alone on the wall, or even propped on a shelf. For me, they are lost within the larger white frame.

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