Read about the mask prints at a-n reviews by Anna Hales
The mask prints explore the notion that humans have more to their surface appearance than meets the eye. In each of us, as we walk through life, we accumulate memories: ghosts; attachments and connections; preferences for the past and expectations for the future. I wanted to express inner emotions, true histories; in effect, faces stripped of the mask of social pretenses.
The prints are vibrant, large scale hand printed silkscreen prints in glowing colours and with a pronounced laid texture which approximates the tactility of skin. Powerful gestural marks and sharp incised lines dominate the faces, which are 4 times life size. Despite the intensity, there are many hidden abstracted narratives in the work open for contemplation.
Each mask is ambiguous in more than one way. The lines that have been carved to make up the face in each print describe more than simply the physical features- in many there are sub stories and hidden codes. To give an example, in Mask Beast, the face is made up of many different animals, which in places, violently jut their limbs out of the confines of the facial border, as if they have taken over the mask’s physicality entirely. In Mask Hook, there is a line of poetry that is written in reverse over the background of the image, which gives a visual depth to the image, as well as a symbolic depth, for those who reverse the text back again to find its meaning. In Mask Ka there are two clearly depicted lovers who hide in the face’s cheeks, he’s looking at her and she faces away.