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CATHY KING

Printmaker Artist

The Redefining Print Project

The Redefining Print Project was set up by the Double Elephant

Print Workshop. Five artists who worked across other art media

were invited to create new work by exploring new definitions of

printmaking. Alongside these artists ten other members from the

Double Elephant Print Workshop were selected to produce an edition

of forty five prints. 'Heron' was my selected print for the project. It was

a multi block linocut consisting of five individual blocks.

These prints formed part of a boxed set called The Exeter Portfolio and

an exhibition by all artists was held at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum

in Exeter.

A Symposium was also held where the commissioned artists delivered talks

together with invited guest speakers.

Absence and Presence

Absence and Presence is a printmaking response to the bombing of

Al Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad where on the 5th March 2007 a car

bomb exploded outside the Shahbandar café. Many people were killed

and injured in this attack which struck at the heart of this cultural and literary

epicentre. This printmaking response runs alongside other projects such

as the Broadside and Bookarts projects. An anthology of poems

Al Mutanabbi Street Starts Here was also written to commemorate and mourn

the loss of life and the destruction of the written word.

My print Coffee at the Shahbandar Cafe (Linocut & Screenprint 2014) responds

to the simple act of sharing conversation and coffee within a rich cultural

environment. The blood and black ink pour from the spout of the coffee pot

mirroring the loss of life and literary ideas that burned on that day. They pool

over the anthology of poems which heaves with the grief and despair written

within its pages and yet its presence signifies hope that these losses will not

be forgotten.

Riddle 57

I was one of many artists who contributed a piece of work to a lockdown project which culminated in an animated encounter as a response to Riddle 57 from the The Exeter Book. The Exeter Book is a tenth century anthology of old English poetry and recognised by Unesco as one of the world's principal cultural artefacts.

For more information visit the Double Elephant website.

The woodcut I made referenced prompts translated by Jacob Polley.

"...little things lifted, carried, borne aloft, transmitted, wheeled, wafted, floated."

"...a hillside, a slope, a craggy hill, a steepness, a rise, an incline, an angle."

"... a woody headland, and arboreal cape, a forest outcrop, a grove, a glen, overgrown, green."

"...the blackest things".

Riddler in Residence: Green Words Poetry Anthology

Discover poems written by members of the local community inspired by Exeter Cathedral. These poems are part of the Green Words Poetry Anthology curated by Riddler in Residence Aly Stoneman.

A selection of my Cathedral prints were used to illustrate some of the poems in the anthology.

Green Words Poetry Anthology

Green Words Poetry Map

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