20th april 2018
Harry Pickup is a Newcastle based artist who specialises in printmaking. By mixing the modern and the traditional, Harry creates work that expresses the dynamism of the modern digital age.
His work follows an interest into the technology behind LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) TV screens. The picture on the screen is made from millions of pixels. Each one of these is effectively a separate red, blue, or green light that can be switched on or off very rapidly to make an image. His laser cut woodblocks are layered to mimic this effect, bridging the gap between two very different image planes, television screen and paper. The result is an image formed entirely by digital software, but realised by woodblock printing, the earliest technique of creating a repeatable image.
The work explores representations of colour on screens, then devolved onto paper. The printing process uses traditional techniques that have been modernised with the use of laser cutting, creating a tension between the old and new.
“My artwork is primarily concerned with the ‘glitch’. A glitch is defined as “a sudden, usually temporary malfunction or fault of equipment.” They are usually the result of a bug or system error within technology, which causes an image to become heavily distorted. When a glitch occurs it is often momentary, lasting for only a fraction of a second before returning to its original state.
I have always been intrigued with the idea of a glitch and the way they are approached and accepted in everyday life. A glitch is never a long lasting problem, it is a hiccup, a momentary lapse, which is often easily corrected and sometimes even ignored or missed. This may well be the case when playing an online game or watching a live football stream but outside of this context glitches can be very costly indeed. Glitches are now capable of shutting down hospitals, changing court cases, closing banks and jeopardising military operations. Our society’s complete dependence on technology has left it susceptible to these momentary errors or slip ups.”
@HARRYPICKUPART
His work follows an interest into the technology behind LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) TV screens. The picture on the screen is made from millions of pixels. Each one of these is effectively a separate red, blue, or green light that can be switched on or off very rapidly to make an image. His laser cut woodblocks are layered to mimic this effect, bridging the gap between two very different image planes, television screen and paper. The result is an image formed entirely by digital software, but realised by woodblock printing, the earliest technique of creating a repeatable image.
The work explores representations of colour on screens, then devolved onto paper. The printing process uses traditional techniques that have been modernised with the use of laser cutting, creating a tension between the old and new.
“My artwork is primarily concerned with the ‘glitch’. A glitch is defined as “a sudden, usually temporary malfunction or fault of equipment.” They are usually the result of a bug or system error within technology, which causes an image to become heavily distorted. When a glitch occurs it is often momentary, lasting for only a fraction of a second before returning to its original state.
I have always been intrigued with the idea of a glitch and the way they are approached and accepted in everyday life. A glitch is never a long lasting problem, it is a hiccup, a momentary lapse, which is often easily corrected and sometimes even ignored or missed. This may well be the case when playing an online game or watching a live football stream but outside of this context glitches can be very costly indeed. Glitches are now capable of shutting down hospitals, changing court cases, closing banks and jeopardising military operations. Our society’s complete dependence on technology has left it susceptible to these momentary errors or slip ups.”
@HARRYPICKUPART
ARTIST INTERVIEW/STUDIO VISIT - APRIL 2018
We visited Harry in his studio before his exhibition with us. Here's an extract of an interview we had with him.
We visited Harry in his studio before his exhibition with us. Here's an extract of an interview we had with him.
Can you tell us a little about your practice and your background?
So when I came to art school, I’d kind of always done a little bit of printmaking on the side. In my first year I didn’t do much printmaking but then in second year I thought I’d like to learn some of the techniques and the processes. So i came in wanting do a bit of everything but then after a while decided that printmaking is what i like so my practice has been based in that medium since the start of second year ive just been learning lots of different techniques, photo-etching all sorts of different types of etching, bit of lithography as well, i found the woodcut and relief processes, i just really liked the amount of contrast you can get in the details and how direct it is. everything you cut you can see and nothings really left to chance, just what you cut is what you get and i like how it worked
What did you make in first year?
First year was weird, I spent the second half of first year balancing stones and doing a bit of sculpture. I was very scared of the workshops, didn't want to go to the workshops, they'd been taken over by fourth years and i thought I'll just stay in my studio and do some drawings, did some small lino, a little bit of painting but mainly sculpture. I came straight from A levels, I was mainly into sculpture and printmaking, so I thought I'll carry on with the sculpture but just, I don't know..
(J) Well it's kind of coming back around, you know, with the curved ones...
Yeah it's almost like I kind of think about things in three dimensional space a lot. The main reason I thought about changing the shape of the prints and mounting them on metal was to kind of force this perspective, these kind of optical, not really illusions, but they work different optically if you were to walk around them.
I think mixing print and sculpture can kind of sometimes be successful and sometimes it can be a bit forced, I think I was on the edge of that with what I was doing in the long gallery. Since then I have kept it more simple and pure printmaking process from that point of view but I think trying to find an interesting way to hang work, those sculptural skills, I guess come through in the way you see the space for print and installation
(E) You said that you think three dimensionally, so what makes you make two dimensional prints?
I think when I say I think three dimensionally I mean how we work in a space, so the work I'm working at the moment, my big woodcuts, is how they work optically from different distances. When I say "sculptural", with the way I'm making up the prints, with the layering.
To be aware of how a print works in a space, especially when you think about scale, and when you're doing things very small - marks and squares - which I was doing, so they are just kind of one merging colour and one solid gradient. It's kind of forcing that interaction with the different distances, but they are completely different when you get up close, I think maybe I'm thinking more about the space and how something works in response to a space more than seeing something in three dimensions.
(J) I looked at your Instagram and I saw lots of drawings of buildings and vehicles and geometric imagery..
At the start I was quite architectural in the way I do the drawings, I think when I do draw they're quite, well not very architectural in detail, but there's.. I've always really liked the constructivist work and futurist and vorticist, very 20th century work. And I always go back to that.
My dissertation is around world war one and cubism and vorticism so it's something that I'm always interested in, I think my drawing style came from those interests. And then I kind of came away from the architectural and starting looking at a bit of a project about working men and things. I think it was a bit of guilt about me being in art school, like I haven't got a job and I thought I wanted to mix this new technique that I'd found, woodcut, with representing the working man, the everyday jobs that we see but don't see. From mixing that with the technique and how you need to step back and look at the print from a distance to see the imagery and if that could work well with the narrative. I think there's something that still very much interests me, engaging the general public, and there's a kind of cynicism about the art world in general, so it's kind of keeping it to having this thought of would my auntie like it or Dave down the pub, it's kind of getting that balance I suppose. But I think since then I've gotten a lot more abstract, stayed away from that, because they were based on photography, and they were photographs of workers and I was recreating them in woodcut.
But since then I stayed away from the photography angle because I'm not really interested in it. You really only talk about the photograph, rather than the print.
So when I came to art school, I’d kind of always done a little bit of printmaking on the side. In my first year I didn’t do much printmaking but then in second year I thought I’d like to learn some of the techniques and the processes. So i came in wanting do a bit of everything but then after a while decided that printmaking is what i like so my practice has been based in that medium since the start of second year ive just been learning lots of different techniques, photo-etching all sorts of different types of etching, bit of lithography as well, i found the woodcut and relief processes, i just really liked the amount of contrast you can get in the details and how direct it is. everything you cut you can see and nothings really left to chance, just what you cut is what you get and i like how it worked
What did you make in first year?
First year was weird, I spent the second half of first year balancing stones and doing a bit of sculpture. I was very scared of the workshops, didn't want to go to the workshops, they'd been taken over by fourth years and i thought I'll just stay in my studio and do some drawings, did some small lino, a little bit of painting but mainly sculpture. I came straight from A levels, I was mainly into sculpture and printmaking, so I thought I'll carry on with the sculpture but just, I don't know..
(J) Well it's kind of coming back around, you know, with the curved ones...
Yeah it's almost like I kind of think about things in three dimensional space a lot. The main reason I thought about changing the shape of the prints and mounting them on metal was to kind of force this perspective, these kind of optical, not really illusions, but they work different optically if you were to walk around them.
I think mixing print and sculpture can kind of sometimes be successful and sometimes it can be a bit forced, I think I was on the edge of that with what I was doing in the long gallery. Since then I have kept it more simple and pure printmaking process from that point of view but I think trying to find an interesting way to hang work, those sculptural skills, I guess come through in the way you see the space for print and installation
(E) You said that you think three dimensionally, so what makes you make two dimensional prints?
I think when I say I think three dimensionally I mean how we work in a space, so the work I'm working at the moment, my big woodcuts, is how they work optically from different distances. When I say "sculptural", with the way I'm making up the prints, with the layering.
To be aware of how a print works in a space, especially when you think about scale, and when you're doing things very small - marks and squares - which I was doing, so they are just kind of one merging colour and one solid gradient. It's kind of forcing that interaction with the different distances, but they are completely different when you get up close, I think maybe I'm thinking more about the space and how something works in response to a space more than seeing something in three dimensions.
(J) I looked at your Instagram and I saw lots of drawings of buildings and vehicles and geometric imagery..
At the start I was quite architectural in the way I do the drawings, I think when I do draw they're quite, well not very architectural in detail, but there's.. I've always really liked the constructivist work and futurist and vorticist, very 20th century work. And I always go back to that.
My dissertation is around world war one and cubism and vorticism so it's something that I'm always interested in, I think my drawing style came from those interests. And then I kind of came away from the architectural and starting looking at a bit of a project about working men and things. I think it was a bit of guilt about me being in art school, like I haven't got a job and I thought I wanted to mix this new technique that I'd found, woodcut, with representing the working man, the everyday jobs that we see but don't see. From mixing that with the technique and how you need to step back and look at the print from a distance to see the imagery and if that could work well with the narrative. I think there's something that still very much interests me, engaging the general public, and there's a kind of cynicism about the art world in general, so it's kind of keeping it to having this thought of would my auntie like it or Dave down the pub, it's kind of getting that balance I suppose. But I think since then I've gotten a lot more abstract, stayed away from that, because they were based on photography, and they were photographs of workers and I was recreating them in woodcut.
But since then I stayed away from the photography angle because I'm not really interested in it. You really only talk about the photograph, rather than the print.