Chimp Pills

Back in the 90s, before digital photography was properly a thing, if you were an art student wanting to document your work, you were told slide film photography was the way to go. Or at least that’s what we at the University ofNorthampton were told; the idea being that when you finished your BA (Hons) Degree and then went on to be interviewed for a place on an MA course at another university, the images of your work would be viewed as projections via a slide projector. This all seems archaic now, and to be honest, it probably was even back then. By the time I left university in 99 the only university I knew of that still required applicants to submit slides was the Royal Academy. Most other institutions preferred photographs (printed-out rather than emailed, as email was still a relatively new concept to most people back then) or to see an artist’s physical portfolio.

 

And the reason I’m rabbiting on about slides? Well, that’s because a friend of mine kindly offered to digitally scan a folder full of slides that Id’ taken (around 25 years ago) of my student artwork. After he’d scanned them I was quite excited to see the results, especially as most of the artwork from that period either no-longer exists or is no-longer in my possession. However, apart from a few reasonable examples, there wasn’t that much call for excitement. Many of the slides were over or under exposed. Although, I had expected this as, as students, we were taught to bracket our photos (take the same shot at several different exposures) to increase the chance of getting a decent photo. Another section of slides all had identical dark marks on them; presumably there had been dirt on the lens of the camera that I was using to document my work. Oh well – I’ll put all that down to experience (and inexperience).

 

Luckily the slide I took of my Chimp Pills print came out reasonably well, and only needed a little cleaning up on the computer. Chimp Pills is one of the missing prints from my university days. At some point during the many times I changed address in London, after leaving university, various portfolios of prints just got left behind. However, I recently discovered the original plates (that I made in order to create the print) in a small portfolio that I had somehow managed to hang onto during my numerous studio, flat, and warehouse moves over the last quarter century. So maybe I’ll get to reprint Chimp Pills, if I ever get access to a printing press again. I do miss printing, so maybe I should find a nearby print workshop and get back into it.

 

It's not always easy to remember what one was thinking when originally making a piece of artwork, especially when it was so long ago. Chimp Pills (at least that’s what I’m now calling it – I don’t think it had a title at the time) was made early on during my time at the University of Northampton. This was shortly before my switch to sculpture, when I still saw myself as a printmaker. I first became interested in printmaking on a previous fine art degree course at Bournville in Birmingham, where I became enamoured with a low-tech form of printmaking called collagraphy. Chimp Pills is an example of this, but with an added element. Once I’d created the collagraphy plates I then overlaid them with a collage of images, using a photosensitive transfer material that was originally used in the manufacture of computer circuit boards. 

What I do remember about that period is that I was interested in aspects of memory, and of forming connections between unconnected things purely by having images of them sit alongside one another, and with the repetition of images. This was something that triggered a few interesting discussions between myself and various tutors at the time.

 

I’m no-longer sure why I hit upon the chimp element of this print but looking at the rest of Chimp Pills I’m pretty sure that I reused some manipulated images of pills, that had previously be created for use in a friend’s short stop motion animation film, that we both spent a weekend working on. Oddly enough, at the time of writing this, I’m sitting on a train travelling up to Yorkshire to see that very friend Lisa Kelly.