Condensing the exhibitiion ‘Silent Conversations’ through an artwork

Soon the paintings will come down from the wall. Months to organise, to prepare paintings and texts, physical work to hang, events to hold – it’s been a major project, and it’s over. I will remember how family and friends turned up from various corners of the country, and beyond, to support me and my work on the wall. How precious these people are.

In the making of this digital print, I felt the exhibition reduce, condense, and fade under my hands.

On one of the final days, I took my crayons and made a quick drawing – six of the paintings are pairs or groups of mysterious people engaged in silent conversation, like stills from an unmade film. I drew the angles of their faces as they talked to each other there in the exhibition. Ephemeral conversations, as my friend and colleague Cornelia Müller described them. Soon to be lost as the unmade film rolls on.

Back home I set up my living space as studio for the first time in months, spent time looking at notes and sketches for unfinished projects and ideas not yet taken into practice. I made a copy of the face-angles drawing to preserve so I could work into the original. The ‘woody’ crayons I used are water-soluble; I worked into them with a wet brush, pulling the colour across the page so that the lines lengthened.

In response to the wet page, printmaking suggested itself. On the paper that had wrapped fresh bread, crumpled and uncertainly absorbent, I re-drew the original nest of face-angles, dampened it and pressed down on to it clean sheets of paper. The 4th and 5th prints pulled off were interesting to my eye. A hint of chrysanthemums – related to mourning here in the UK but, in Japan, symbolic of rejuvenation and rebirth. I’ll take that.

I hang the original copied, the original made wet, and the print on the wall.

I remember the zig-zag book I had thought about producing months ago. Scan, copy, print, collage until I collect the three on one page, and fold the paper into a zig-zag.