Melismatic: the Prints of Ian Davenport

Ian Davenport, Poured Triptych Etching: Ambassadors (After Holbein) (2017), aquatint, 159 x 239cm, © Ian Davenport, 2017. Courtesy of artist and Alan Cristea Gallery, London

 

Ian Davenport & Michael Bracewell, Ian Davenport: Melismatic, Alan Cristea Gallery, 2017, paperback, 48pp, 41 col. illus., £20, ISBN 978 0 9955046 3 6

 

Ian Davenport’s new exhibition of prints (Alan Cristea Gallery, London, ends 31 July 2017) showcases series of prints which extend his interest in using chance in formats that evoke established rigid pictorial conventions. To these compositions Davenport has applied a positively sensual approach to colour.

Davenport’s vertical stripe prints take as their starting point his approach to making stripe paintings. He takes a rigid smooth surface and applies multiple streams of liquid paint until the whole surface is coloured. These lines run down the surface and mingle at the bottom. The bars of alternating colour relate to the Op Art and Neo-Geo schools of painting but the fluid dynamics of Davenport’s paint assert themselves in the slight blending that occurs at certain places in the edges of stripes and most dramatically at the bottom, where the liquid flows in a more unconstrained fashion.

The printmaking process involves the photographing of paintings specially made for the purposes of generating prints. The photographic images are split into colour transparencies and these sheets worked on by hand. The separate colours are photographically transferred to metal plates as areas of aquatint. (Etching is the process of ink being worked into incised lines on a metal sheet and paper being pressed over this sheet, transferring ink from plate to paper; aquatint is the method of gathering ink in large areas in tiny pits, thus creating washes or blocks of colour, an effect which is not possible in line etching.) The bands of colour are laboriously inked by hand before the paper is laid over the plates and run through a press. Thumbprint Editions studio in South London carry out this elaborate, time-consuming and sophisticated process under the guidance of the artist in collaboration with master printmakers.

The prints in this stripe series are up to 159 cm high by 239 cm wide and achieve the physical presence of paintings. They are large enough for a viewer to immerse him- or herself in. The colour palettes are sometimes derived from paintings Davenport admires. In this series some prints have the colours of paintings by Holbein, Van Gogh, Klimt and Perugino. The mind alternates between an instinctive search for patterns and pleasure in immersion in an undulating curtain of rich pure colours. In some instances Davenport requested plates be printed a second time without re-inking. This generates second proofs that are pale in colour, close to watercolours in appearance. This demonstrates his keen eye for opportunity and his flexibility.

Ian Davenport, Poured Triptych Etching: Primavesi (After Klimt) (2017), aquatint, 159 x 239cm, © Ian Davenport, 2017. Courtesy of artist and Alan Cristea Gallery, London

 

Another series are the Colour Splat screenprints. In these images a scattering of splashes of liquid colour have been applied and their vertical drips below form curtains of alternating and mixed colour. These are less successful than the stripe prints because there is a visual struggle between the assertive incidents of the splashes (and their attendant spatters of colour) and the much less imposing drips. The imbalance is never resolved and it does not seem clear that the artist intended such an imbalance to be so prominent. Davenport’s art seems to work best when the struggle between formal order and fluid dynamics of materials are closely matched and constrain each other. In the Colour Splats the material characteristics overwhelm whatever the artist can do to try to constrain them. That said it is good to see an established artist taking chances even if the results are not – for this reviewer – wholly successful.

Unlike many artists of his generation, Davenport is genuinely engaged by the printmaking process and works carefully to find the best technique and approach to making his prints. While some artists simply photograph an existing work, tweak it on computer and send the file off to be printed, Davenport thinks through his work and collaborates with experts at every stage. He sometimes pushes master printmakers to innovate or to try methods that seem at first impossible but turn out to have beautiful and unique results. His decisions are not determined by what is easiest but by what will produce the best results.

The catalogue contains a brief interview with the artist and photographs of the prints being made, giving an idea of the process involved. The works themselves are reproduced in full, with complete technical data on technique, paper and edition sizes.

24 July 2017