Songs & Prophecies
Songs & Prophecies is a landscape meditation on my home village of Felpham in West Sussex, a place that from 1800 to 1803 was also home to the artist and poet, William Blake.
Today, we remember Blake for his mystical art and writing. But in his own lifetime, this provided Blake with scant remuneration. In his teenage years, he apprenticed as an engraver and throughout his life, his primary income was from engraving plates to illustrate the works of wealthy patrons. The prints in this series have been made using the photopolymer gravure process, a modern descendant of the process practised by Blake. The gravure plates created from my photographic originals are printed using an 18th century etching press, a piece of equipment almost identical to that used by Blake.
The prints in this series include both photographic images and short extracts from Blake’s written work. In presenting these, I am seeking to dislocate ideas of time and place, inviting my viewers to reflect on ideas of past and present, progress and regression, change and constancy.
In 2018, eight prints from Songs & Prophecies were exhibited at the In a Silent Way exhibition at the Regency Town House in Hove, alongside work from five of my fellow MA students, Syl Ojalla, Lorraine Edridge, Andy Lloyd, Elizabeth Doak and Torz Dallison:
