‘Pick Me Up’ opened today in Somerset House and runs until May 3rd. Print Club London have taken up a spot within the show and throughout the duration will be inviting members to come along and produce a live screen-print. We caught up with artist Audrey Roger to ask her a few questions about her work.
You’re going to be in the show, creating prints in the temporary workshop alongside Print Club. Are you excited to be a part of the UK’s first contemporary graphic design show?
AR: Yes I’m very excited! It’s a great opportunity to be part of such a diverse event showcasing such amazing talent. I’m really excited to be showing my work to the public and demonstrating the processes involved. And as a spectator I can’t wait to check out the exhibitions, workshops and all the other events taking place during Pick Me Up!
How did your relationship with Print Club come about?
AR: I heard about Print Club by chance. I was looking for a screen printing studio and a friend recommended it to me. It just so happened that it was just starting up and was two minutes away from my flat in Dalston. At the time I had just quit my job as head visual merchandiser for a big clothing company. I became one of the first Print Club members and spent most of my days screen printing there for a while.
You initially trained as a fashion and textile designer, what made you decide to move away from fashion design and into graphics?
AR: It wasn’t a conscious decision. In fact I don’t think it’s that clear cut and I don’t rule out working on fashion designs now or in the future. I have just designed limited edition screen printed bags for the Supermarket Sarah wall installations in Selfridges. They are up on the Clash Mash wall from the 21st to the 28th of April. Fashion and textile design are things that I have always been interested in but I like to explore different mediums. I started screen printing on fabric but moved on to paper when I designed the images for the big multi-coloured star posters. The designs seemed more suited to paper and to a really big scale. It just depends on the idea. That’s what guides me from one technique to another and helps me learn completely new crafts. In fact I have been working on cut out shapes on gold card recently which have given me ideas for designing jewelry
How do you begin a new piece of work? What techniques do you use in your process?
AR: It depends. Usually I start by drawing shapes on paper. But sometimes I’ll start by playing around with origami structures or doing cut outs from paper. I use a mixture of techniques. Sometimes I’ll scan some images I’ve drawn, print them, make collages with them and play around with the different shapes, rescan them and then re-work them in Illustrator. I like to use both manual techniques and digital ones. I don’t think I could use either exclusively. In the past I’ve also done embroidery on screen printed images I made on fabric. It’s not something I use at the moment but I might come back to it in the future.
Your work is rich in geometric shapes and references to origami. In some of your designs the patterns and pallet used could also be referenced back to African art. Is this something which you’re also inspired by?
AR: I really love the 3D effect you get from origami and the textures and patterns that you can play with when making origami. It usually gives me ideas for 2D images. I guess the African art reference came about from living in Dalston and being inspired by the African fabrics and the jewellery sold in Ridley Road market. The African fabrics are really bold, graphic and very modern and they usually contain quit a lot of geometric shapes which I tend to gravitate towards. And I love the gold jewellery you find on the high street and in the market. It’s so bling and extravagant but with such intricate shapes.
The aesthetic style of your work is quite Post Modern in that it seems to take references from a range of sources. There are strong links to Op Art of the 60s but your prints update it, bringing the style to life with an injection of colour…
AR: It’s the 3D effect and sense of movement you get from Op Art pieces which interest me in particular. I’m also very interested in 70’s design, in the architecture, objects and fashion from that era. There is more of an edge, a grown up aspect and a certain sexiness to the way shapes were used then compared to the 60’s. I’m also interested in geometric shapes and patterns from the Bauhaus movement, especially the work of Josef and Anni Albers which today still looks so modern and resonates with the geometric obsession going on at the moment.
In terms of your work, you mix screen printing techniques with embroidery, this is something which gives a unique twist to your work. Where did the idea for combining the two stem from?
AR: I have always been interested in meticulous textile crafts like embroidery, crochet and knitting. I crochet and knit from time to time. I love making 3D objects out of crochet or knit. I guess for these embroidered screen prints I just wanted something that would pop out both in colour and texture, instead of having just a flat screen printed image, and I was in the mood for something that required quite a bit of patience and attention to detail. It was the dead of winter when I made them! For these I was inspired by B movies like “Day of The Triffids” and “Them” and I was looking at a lot of artists who use embroidery like Megan Whitmarsh, Tim Moore, Jenny Hart, and even people like Michel Gondry who uses quite a lot of textiles in his videos or films.
AR: I have always been interested in meticulous textile crafts like embroidery, crochet and knitting. I crochet and knit from time to time. I love making 3D objects out of crochet or knit. I guess for these embroidered screen prints I just wanted something that would pop out both in colour and texture, instead of having just a flat screen printed image, and I was in the mood for something that required quite a bit of patience and attention to detail. It was the dead of winter when I made them! For these I was inspired by B movies like “Day of The Triffids” and “Them” and I was looking at a lot of artists who use embroidery like Megan Whitmarsh, Tim Moore, Jenny Hart, and even people like Michel Gondry who uses quite a lot of textiles in his videos or films.
The use of embroidery in your work, is combined with figurative collage of burlesque, screen-printed, characters and is something which is the other scale to the geometric prints we see often in your work. How did you make the journey to the more figurative end of the spectrum?
AR: I started with the figurative and then started working with geometric shapes kind of in opposition to it. I used to flick between the two. Wanting to do very detailed, small scaled embroidered images or collages, and then wanting to work on the opposite, very bold, large scale, clean screen prints. At the moment I’m having too much fun exploring variations on geometric shapes and patterns and applying that to different mediums!
This seems to focus on an almost Surrealist element…
AR: I appreciate the Surrealist movement but it wasn’t something I have been looking at for inspiration. I don’t really know where the surrealist influence from these collages and screen printed embroidered images sprang from initially. I just started mixing and matching images of pin ups like Betty Page and Bunny Yeager with exotic elements like tropical flowers, carnivorous plants and tigers. I did the collages as artwork for a fancy dress boat party a friend of mine organised on a barge and then did variations of these collages onto fabric later on.
You’ve lived in both Paris and London, which do you feel has been the most influential on your creativity, if there is any difference?
AR: London has definitely been more of an influence. I think there’s an energy about London that you don’t find in Paris. The pace of life and mentality are very different. People are more accepting here and more open to new ideas. I’m not saying that Paris isn’t creative but it there is more of a conservative outlook on things over there. I think East London has also been a very big influence on my work. It’s great to live in an area with so many creative and talented people around and where things are constantly evolving. It naturally feeds into your own creativity.
What projects are you excited about right now? Anything on the horizon?
AR: Recently I’ve been working on quite a lot of products so I’m kind of itching again to work on bigger scale and more conceptual projects. I’ve been looking at the work of artists like Ron Resch, an American artist who worked on origami tessellations and made amazing huge patterned origami structures. I want to use some of the geometric shapes I’ve been working on recently and use them for large scale origami patterns. I’ve also been wanting to work on projections and animations using geometric shapes and cut-outs. I got a projector for my birthday a few months ago and can’t wait to experiment with it and play around with shapes!
All images belong to Audrey Roger 2010 http://cargocollective.com/audreyroger
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