Kerry-Lyn Honey (nee Potgieter),
Buffalo City Public FET College
East London, SOUTH AFRICA
Email: kerrylyn@bccollege.co.za
Paper Proposal: “The Collaborative Shift”
The paper will include a selective history and critical analysis of collaborations in printmaking, after the revival of the print in the 1960’s, to present day. Artistic collaboration in the 1960’s and during the 1970’s occupied a special position as redefinitions of art and of artistic collaboration merged.
Various relationships have existed historically between printers and artists. Once printers were skilled craftsmen with limited commercial ties to artists, but since the sixties they have assumed an inventive and more truly collaborative role in the creative process. Modernisms preoccupation with originality gave way to a widespread acceptance of previously despised commercial processes, such as photo/offset lithography and screenprint. In addition to this, revivalists of individual “expression” embraced the woodcut for its primitivist associations, as well as age-old intaglio techniques to satisfy the growing market place. According to Richard Field, prints constitute “a special hybrid that negotiates the slippery interface between modernist and postmodernist practices.” (Taylor 2004:1).
The word “collaborative” implies many a discourse, especially when referring to printmaking, as there are many ways in which collaborations can evolve. Collaborations could involve a technician working purely as a technician, or there could be a break down of barriers, and a sharing of ideas between the artist and the printmaker. This brings to question as to who is the “real” artist? Here the modernist attitude of the significance of the artist is parodied. The `originality' of the whole work is apparently the effect of two (or in some cases more) persons working. This is unlike modern art where the identity of the artist is unmistakable. Depending on the nature of the collaboration, the modernist attitude of trying to figure out who did what, cannot be fully applied. One is reminded of the premodern way of several artists working together to produce a single work. Issues of delegation of manufacture go way back in Western art history. However when more than one person creates a work, the modernist claim to originality, the claim that a piece of art is an original work of a single artist, is muted.
RESUME : KERRY-LYN HONEY (NEÉ POTGIETER)
Kerry-Lyn Honey (neé Potgieter) was born and educated in East London, South Africa. She has travelled the United Kingdom, Europe and the Middle East extensively, having produced work at Edinburgh Printmakers and at Oxford Printmakers, whilst further developing her skills. She returned to settle in East London, South Africa and is currently lecturing in the Department of Art and Design at the Buffalo City Public FET College, satellite campus for Port Elizabeth Technikon.
Kerry-Lyn has participated in numerous exhibitions and conferences. She has been fortunate enough to have attended the last three Impact Printmaking Conferences. Discussion and debate surrounding the art of the print, has always been of interest to her.
Kerry-Lyn has collaborated with artist/printmakers on a number of projects. The largest of which being the Buffalo City Community Art Project and the resultant exhibition titled Salted Lines: Images from the Mouth of the Buffalo. The portfolio was exhibited throughout South Africa, as well as at the 3rd Impact International Printmaking Conference, which was held in Cape Town in 2003. Kerry-Lyn initiated, curated and developed the project in order to impart knowledge, whilst promoting skills development and training.
Contact details:
E-mail : kerrylyn@bccollege.co.za