The Graven Image Press: lettercutting and visual metaphor in the work of Stan Greer

exhibition 7 September?6 October (opening hours)

private view, opening talk and demonstration Tuesday 6 September

printmaking demonstrations 14, 21 & 28 September and 5 October

 

An exhibition of the lettering and fine press/printmaking work of Stan Greer and an opportunity to see in action an Albion press from the Library?s own collection, last seen working some thirty years ago.

Stan Greer?s lettering is an attempt to reinvest our alphabetic tradition with visual as well as verbal metaphor. All languages are inherently metaphorical, but few retain in accessible forms their original pictographic or symbolic references. Greer?s ?word pictures?, which carry at the same time visual and verbal meanings, are therefore ambiguous and doubly powerful as metaphor, literally figures of speech, which surprise the viewer by ?foregrounding? the meaning of a phrase, quotation or poem, and inviting the onlooker not to passively view, but to actively interpret the image.

The craft of freely-cut letters in such work permits the interpretation of historical letterforms and the creation of new or experimental ones. This of course has precedents in early calligraphic drawings, through Dadaist concrete poetry and the Expressionist beliefs that typographic design should derive from content, to the heyday of art poster design. In this exhibition too, questions arise concerning the boundaries of legibility and the extent to which typography assists communication, but there is a reminder also that letters can be playful, amusing, puzzling, pure experiment or totally abstract. Works shown may therefore be grouped either by content or by form.

The use of relief printing methods, with images cut directly in wood and lino, is ideally suited to the creation of the bold, arresting statement. Letters may be raised or incised, but are almost always cut in reverse. The resulting block is inked and the image imprinted on dampened mould-made paper on a Columbian or Albion press in limited editions of 100. This process will be demonstrated on an Albion on fixed days during the exhibition, together with a selection of original blocks.

All editioned prints are available singly, unframed, numbered and signed by the artist.

Stan Greer studied modern languages at Trinity College, Dublin, sculpture in Bavaria, and has taught in West Africa, Germany and England. He founded Graven Image Press in 1981, and left teaching in 1995 to concentrate on printmaking full-time. He has previously exhibited with Letter Exchange and the Fine Press Book Association, as well as selected galleries in the UK, but this will be his first solo show, and the most comprehensive collection of his limited edition prints.

Stan has kindly offered to demonstrate his printmaking processes in action using one of the Library?s own presses. These demonstrations will be held in the Exhibition Room of the Library at 2.30pm on Wednesday 14, 21, 28 September and 5 October.