The Master Printers Series
Manneken Press | Kate Petley: Signal and Marker
Kate Petley created her “Signal” and “Marker” monoprint series at Manneken Press in 2022. These arresting images are a singular blending of 3-D and 2-D imagery, analog and digital photographic processes, and relief printing.
Between 2013 and 2020, Kate Petley completed four monoprint projects at Manneken Press. For each, she created ink or graphite drawings on film which were used to make photogravure plates using the direct gravure technique. The plates were printed in black ink on white paper, and the prints were finished using relief printing in color. Around 2020 Kate initiated a major shift in her painting practice – now photography played an important role in it, and we wanted to reflect that shift in a new monoprint project. The Signal and Marker prints began in much the same way she would begin a painting: by making simple, temporary maquettes in her studio. She used gradient film to wrap these objects, then staged and lit them, and used a digital camera to compose in the viewfinder and capture the final image. Through this process the humble sculptural forms were elevated to mythical proportions. For the new monoprint project, two photographic images were chosen. Digital positive films were produced and used to make copper photogravure plates which were hand-printed in black ink on paper. Using relief printing and stencils, Petley added color to the prints, building layers of richness and luminosity, subtle gradients and overlapping geometries. The result was a stunning series of related but unique prints which blur the categorical boundaries between sculpture, photography and printmaking.
The twenty seven Signal and Marker prints are photogravure and relief monoprints. Each piece is unique, printed by hand using archival oil-based inks on Hahnemühle Copperplate and Arches En Tout Cas papers. They are bleed prints, with the image extending to the edges of the paper; their dimensions are 24 3/4 x 20 1/4 inches. Each print is titled, signed and dated by the artist, verso, in pencil, and is impressed with the Manneken Press blind stamp. Published by and available from Manneken Press.
Kate Petley, based in New York, is known for dissolving distinctions between media. Collapsing the boundaries between photography and painting, Petley reframes the luminous surface via the ever-present backlit screen. She draws inspiration from sources such as portraiture, still life, personal experience, and the mechanics of visual perception. Ordinary materials like cardboard and paper are manipulated and placed within intensely lit arrangements that defy description. Indeterminate light sources illuminate vivid environments that question scale and orientation, using colour and form to upend expectations of photographed reality. Sculptural shapes assume mythic proportions, acting within atmospheric backgrounds. Roughly handled, her constructed arrangements show signs of their making, with no attempt made to conceal their flawed surfaces. Petley’s longstanding commitment to experimentation and transformation as both process and content is offered up with imagery that generates complex reactions, pointing toward the artificial sublime.
The artist writes:
There is an awkward tension, a sense of familiarity, and an odd balance in the compositions. I’m looking for a particular rhythm, a clumsy formality that seems almost tender. Moving towards sensation, subject matter is pushed out and an experiential sense of space fills the gap left behind. I am determined to pull a non-existing image out of thin air using a vocabulary that is not about language and by complicating the relationship of foreground to background, alluding to a distinct presence, my own experiences are inserted.
