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A duo of printmakers are showing off the etchings they created after setting up an old school printing press in a former military barracks in a new exhibition.
‘Etchings by Tim Le Breuilly and Tom Parker’ is open at Jersey Museum’s Link Gallery until the end of the month and marks the first time the pair are showing work together.
Last year the pair, who share a passion for printmaking, established Luddite Press at the quartermater’s store at the Grève de Lecq Barracks, which is now the home of ArtHouse Jersey.
Pictured: Tim Le Breuilly and Tom Parker set up 'Luddite Press' last year.
Luddite Press is an open-access print room providing workspace with three printing presses to support several processes, including etching with copper, aluminium and zinc, lino-cut, wood-block and basic screen-printing.
Alongside the artist-run studio space, there will be a programme of events and workshops with the 2020 schedule due to be released soon.
Print-making has been an integral part of the two artists’ practice for a number of years. Both have studied Fine Art in London - Tim at The Slade and Tom at The CASS - and continue to work primarily in print.
They both discovered the practice while studying seemingly unrelated subjects at university and got back into printing after meeting in Jersey and borrowing a press from fellow artist Nick Romeril.
Pictured: Luddite Press is based at the quartermater’s store at the Grève de Lecq Barracks.
For the last two-and-a-half years, they have collaborated closely in the studio and decided to get their own press and to make it available to other artists wishing to get printing. The Luddite Press was therefore set up at the end of 2019, with Tim and Tom running workshops in the run-up to Christmas.
The pair is now presenting a series of etchings created during the set-up of Luddite Press in the hope it will show other creatives the different processes they can explore in the print room.
‘Etchings’ is “a work-in-progress snap-shot of Tim and Tom’s respective practice whilst developing the new space at The Barracks,” Chris Addy, Sites Curator at Jersey Heritage, explained.
Tim, whose work aims to break the conventions of printing, admits his approach to etching is very different to that of a traditional printmaker.
Pictured: Tim enjoys breaking the conventions of printing.
“If I followed the stages I am supposed to, I would probably end up with what I set out to do. But by doing it like this, there’s a magic - something happens that makes it different. It’s almost like setting up to fail, but in a good way,” he explained.
Tom, meanwhile, describes his work as “self-referential”.
“The work is more about printmaking, it’s quite abstract,” he explained. “There is so much process that outcome. You would not go through all that just for an image. I try to explore as much about the art as I can, the work is not about anything outside of that, there is no figuration.”
Pictured: Tom's work is about printing itself.
Commenting on how the exhibition came together, Tim explained that Mr Addy, who also has a background on printmaking, had been very supportive.
“He asked us if we'd be able to put something on at the Link Gallery so we were happy to oblige,” Tim said.
“Recently, there's been a lot of moving presses around - mainly by Tom whilst I was on holiday - so it feels good to focus a little on our own work and see it outside of the context of the quartermaster's store.
“We chose to select a small number of works that we were really happy with rather than a salon style show. Both myself and Tom have had solo shows in the gallery before, but this is actually the first time we've shown our work alongside each other."
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