PLymouth art weekender 2019

5/29/2020

Plymouth Art Weekender takes place at the end of September and artists are invited to submit proposals for the 3 day event.
Part of my MA module included a live project and although I had a number of socially engaged projects lined up I wanted to do something that reflected my current research...so my Witches Knickers project was born.
Witches Knickers is a term used to describe plastic bags caught in trees, but my bags weren't going to be plastic. I was going to use Korean hanji paper printed with cyanotype. The print were a mixture of organic garden prints and takuhon take away food containers fashioned into vest style carrier bags..the type so thin and flimsy you are lucky if they last until you get home let alone being able to reuse them.

Witches Knickers
Takuhon and Cyanotype on Hanji Paper
With reference to the mass of colourful plastic carrier bags seen fluttering in trees around the country, Witches Knickers. I have fashioned three vest style carrier bags that will spend the Plymouth Art Weekender in the trees at the entrance of Plymouth College of Art at the mercy of the windy city’s elements. An opportunity to test my ideas around materials, process and sustainability. And to question my own and society's difficult relationship with the disposable.
Exploring printmaking through found objects, here takeaway food containers. Layering and overprinting, enables me to embrace the chance marks and focus on process rather than image.
Forming part of my MA in Printmaking, Witches Knickers is a continuation of my research into accidental marks and the breakdown of images. And of my Allieurs 2 research around ‘Food to Go/Food on the Move’ culture, for Impact 10 Santander with Plymouth College of Art, September 2018.
www.nickyharwood.co.uk

The prints were supposed to have hung in these trees at the front of Plymouth College of Art however on the day of instillation the wind was so strong I chickened out and relocated them to the back of the college.