Catherine Daunt's Top Picks from Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair

Catherine Daunt, the Hamish Parker Curator of Modern and Contemporary Graphic Art at the British Museum, has chosen her Top Picks from Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair’s 2023 Curated Hang.

I’ve always loved the scratchiness that can be achieved through drypoint and I think it is used very effectively in this print, giving it a sense of slight discomfort and impermanence: an intriguing moment half-sketched onto the memory. The monochrome adds to this while enhancing the broad range of textures throughout the image.

There is a real feeling of movement in this image as the figures tumble and turn elegantly and in harmony through the air. Their silhouetted bodies sweep and swerve, seeming almost to disintegrate as the moment passes and they are pulled back to earth.

Annabel Crowther has such an interesting approach to depicting the female nude, her most frequent subject. In her prints, continuous snaking lines mark out the contours of a body like embroidered threads. Aquatint provides texture and tone, filling in the flesh and creating depth.

There is something uncanny about this exquisitely realised photoetching, perhaps because of the jewel-like colour of the pool, or the monochrome buildings, or the hazy landscape beyond. The lone dog emphasises the emptiness of the scene.

There is a rich tradition of prints featuring skulls, from anatomical studies and memento mori images to the gothic and the macabre. Here, Felicity Taylor seems to present the skull as an object, to be viewed from all angles and in fragments; not to be feared but to be presented and examined. I was drawn to this print by the lines of the bone, the dark recesses of the eye holes and the smoky, smudgy marks framing, obscuring and swirling around each little study.

Drypoint is used here to excellent effect, to depict the tall, spindly trees and the encroaching darkness of the forest. It is a dramatic, almost cinematic image of a lone figure in a seemingly inhospitable environment. A sense of unease pervades.

The figure in this print seems so full of character; I would love to know what her side eye signals. Monotype is used brilliantly here to produce a painterly impression of this reclining figure. The dark pink line outlining her ear, continuing along her shoulder and down her arm is a brilliant touch.

Aquatint is used beautifully in this print, particularly to suggest the smooth sides of the bath, darkened and stained in areas, and the bunched-up folds of the shower curtain. An unappealing clump of hair hangs over the edge, delineating the corner and drawing our eyes in. It is a slightly troubling scene: whose legs are those and what are they doing in an empty bath?

There is a tension contained within this print, as if an invisible elastic band is being stretched between the figure on the right and the group on the left. Sally McKay often bases her images on dance rehearsals, and I have a real sense here that I am watching a performance. The dramatic lighting adds to the theatricality.

I was drawn to the subtle gradations of colour in this reduction linocut, which really give the sense of a rising mist. There is something very tranquil about the composition, the forms of the trees and undulating land, and the slow movement from dark to light.