Irma Irsara

Strata in Blu

| Irma Irsara

STRATA IN BLU
Solo noi siamo il volto del nostro tempo

I’ll be doing a mail-art giveaway in 9 days time (Thursday 11 Nov, 12 noon)
An edition of 25 paper pulp/lino pieces will be made available on a first-come-first-served basis. Details of the piece below and a link nearer the time.

Multiple of 25 numbered and signed on reverse

Paper pulp (cotton linters), dyes, lino printing
11(H) x 15(W) cm

The furrows, created by stripping away embedded hollow paper strips from the pulp layers, depict water level marks and indicators of wider changes. I included the intermittent imprint of knots in the paper to denote the interruption to the natural flow of water.

Accenda la luce, nasce l’ombra

| Irma Irsara

Loss of connectivity and nostalgia for past encounters and associations can lead to feelings of isolation and vulnerability. At the same time, shared life experiences creates a new social equality that connects us even though we’re kept apart.

The shift in the perception of time over the last year led to a change in my outlook. Instead of working towards a precise event or end point, I found myself looking backwards, reimagining outcomes by revisiting the past.

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I looked at past work and notebooks, extracting significant words and phrases in a process of re-evaluation. I also worked on the project Accenda la luce, nasce l’ombra over the lockdown periods, a composite wall piece consisting of 72 sections with embossed and printed lettering using letterpress type and book binding press. Each standalone piece becomes part of the overall installation – a wall of fragments and random thoughts incorporating old sayings with scraps of personal nostalgic thought. The words are deliberately intended to have possible multiple meanings to reflect diverse responses to a common experience and to evoke an imagined future.

Hidden Femininity

| Irma Irsara

 

The collographs features in this post, based on ethnic garments, were part of a series created for my exhibition Hidden Femininity (Filef Centre 1996). They were developed during my collaboration Automatic Cross Stitch with poet Frances Presley, which looked at the rag trade in North London (N4) run mostly by Greek and Turkish owners.

I was interested in hidden women workers, working illegally in the garment industry in North London during the early nineties. I focused on those working in the factories in and around Finsbury Park mostly run by Turkish and Greek families. In order to gain access, I worked in one of the factories for a number of weeks cutting the loose threads off the finished garments.

I would often see women who couldn’t afford childcare bringing in their babies to work and hiding them from view in their work area. I observed one woman taking secret breaks to breastfeed her child. They were also instructed to disappear if the inspectors arrived.

The women I saw were mostly Indian and Eastern European who relied on the work for their survival and whose circumstances resulted in their exploitation.

The factories have disappeared from the area due to regeneration.

Details of the artworks:
available from irmairsara.bigcartel.com

Cintura (belt) 1996
Collograph using material (factory off-cuts), card with stitching, coloured tissue, rolled colour (oil).
One of three variations from the same card plate, so each one unique.

Print size: 12.5(H) x 30(W) cm
Paper size: 19(H) x 35(W) cm

Punto riso per una sposina (Rice Stitch for a Bride) 1996

One-colour embossed collograph (card plate) of a child’s knitted jumper.
AP1 Artist proof 1 of 2 variations / no edition

print size: 21(H) x 48(W) cm
paper size: 28.5(H) x 57(W) cm

Guanti per sposina (Gloves for a Bride) 1996

One-colour embossed collograph (card plate) using wedding gloves.
AP2 Artist proof 2 of 3 / no edition

print size: 31(H) x 22(W) cm
paper size: 44(H) x 27(W) cm

Irlandese con currach

| Irma Irsara

Irlandese con currach
(Irish with currach) 1990

A companion piece to ‘Verso l’isola di Murano‘, ‘Irlandese con currach’ uses a precise palate of earthy colours to comment on ideas of tradition and survival linked to landscape.

Both pieces have similarities in theme but they are also preoccupied with captured light. In this piece, the fresh strong green that reflects back the light is particularly important and represents a response to an area with a unique visual identity.

Details:

Price £70 (multiple) offered as part of #artistsupportpledge initiative.

unframed price

Limited edition 2 plate etching
Aquatint, sugar-lift, aquaforte, rolled colour

2/50 – number 2 of an edition of 50

Paper: Somerset White Texture 300gsm

Print size: H 15 cm x W 15 cm
Paper size: H 25.5 cm x W 25 cm

Suggested framed dimensions:
H 31 x W 31 cm (min)

Available at:
http://irmairsara.bigcartel.com/product/irlandese-con-curraghs

Artist info:
https://irmairsara.com/about.htm

I’ll be offering further work for £200 or under and will pledge to use 20% of every £1000 raised to purchase a piece myself or as a donation to one of the art charities supported by the scheme.

About the scheme:
#artistsupportpledge is an artist-led movement and network to support artists struggling financially during Covid 19 using the social media platform Instagram.
Full details: artistsupportpledge.com

Porous

| Irma Irsara

Porous refers to the filtering of a feminine aesthetic that runs throughout the book. Using basic shapes within the images – spiral, triangle, circle, square – my aim was to transform the masculinity of the four elements.

I used various materials to imprint patterns into the softground – materials that relate to ideas of feminism, liberation and empowerment. These include lace from old dresses and, more importantly, tights, significant as they derive from hose originally worn by European men, subsequently appropriated by women.

Materials from women’s fashion are also a reference to the clothes factories local to me at the time but now gone (around Fontill Road, North London) which were predominantly Greek and Turkish.

The single words, produced with photo etching, were suggested by Frances Presley as counterpoints to the imagery

Offered for £150 as part of #artistsupportpledge

Limited edition artists book with hand-printed etchings
13/20 – number 13 in edition of 20
(number 1 was purchased by British Library, Modern Contemporary Collection)

Linen-coated hard cover
Stitch bound – printed back and front

8 pages + blank inside covers
8 x 2 plate etchings total – 1 per page
Etchings are aquaforte, sugar lift, aquatint, soft ground incorporating colour tissue (Chine-collé)

single word texts are etched on shaped plates

book size 16.5 x 16.5 cm
page size 16 x 16 cm

About the scheme:
#artistsupportpledge is an artist-led movement and network to support artists struggling financially during Covid 19 using Instagram.
Full details: artistsupportpledge.com

#artistsupportpledge

| Irma Irsara

The Artist Support Pledge is new scheme which aims to promote and support artists at a difficult time. The concept is simple: Artists who commit to the pledge will post images of a work that’s for sale on Instagram, for no more than £200 ($230), and each time their sales reach £1,000 ($1,155) they promise to buy another artist’s work for £200.

Selling certain works cheaper is an act of generosity on the part of artists in return for support. In addition, when an artist reaches their target, they pledge to pay it forward

The initiative was set up by Matthew Burrows to alleviate some of the stress the pandemic has caused to artists. The project, which he launched on his Instagram page, “was really a response to the current situation, a creative solution to how I might help myself but also friends and colleagues through this period, by utilizing the generosity of  the arts community”

I currently have a number of works on offer (with more to follow) which can be purchased direct or through my Big Cartel site.

links to the work (clockwise):

Riflesso di terra arida (Reflection of Dry Earth)

Artichoke Stalks

Studio con il nero (Study with Black)

Acqua limpida (Limpid Water)

Studio sull’alba 3 (Dawn Study 3) 

 

 

Ash Seeds

| Irma Irsara

‘Ash Seeds’ (2015) evokes the ancient human significance of the ash tree and its fragility. The digital print is of constructed ice and plant material with seeds from an ash tree afflicted by Chalara dieback disease.

One of a series produced for Halse for hazel (Halse), a sequence of poems about trees, their languages and forms by Frances Presley (Shearsman Books). The images were reproduced in black and white in the book.

The collaboration took place during the final year of Presley’s project funded by the Arts Council and included research at the national collections of Kew Gardens and Wakehurst Place. Images and texts were exhibited as part of the exhibition ‘In the open’, at Murray Edwards College in Cambridge in 2015.

Available to buy from: irmairsara.bigcartel.com/product/ash-seeds

Signed/numbered
limited edition digital print
edition of 15

Epson archival inks on Somerset Velvet 300gsm paper

digital print of birch bark, dyed paper pulps, ice and shredded text

H 84.1 x W 59.4 cm

Aerial landscape 5

| Irma Irsara

Aerial landscape 5 (2013) represents a view of Sussex showing a landscape delineated by boundary and colour where land meets sea.
The yellow of the rapeseed fields and light greens and browns are divided by the precise man-made geometry of dark green hedges.
I used re-cycled dyed leather where I transferred the colour onto the wet cotton pulp in order to fuse it with the existing pigment dyes.
The result is a work imbued with a feeling of nostalgia, a look back at the past from a position of borrowed time.

cotton fibre, pigment dyes
H 28 x W 36 cm

This work is available to buy from:
irmairsara.bigcartel.com/product/aerial-landscape-5

Invito sulla torre di Babele

| Irma Irsara

I created Invito sulla torre di Babele in the Accademia di Belle Arti under the tutelage of Fabio Bertoni who maintained that you can extract something from nothing by starting with the language of lines.

Using the story of the Tower of Babel I wanted to explore the idea of language emerging organically from a landscape.

Available from:
https://irmairsara.bigcartel.com/product/invito-sulla-torre-di-babele

Details:

Limited edition 2 colour etching
Aquatint, sugar-lift, aquaforte, rolled colour

30/30 – number 30 of an edition of 30

Paper: Somerset White Texture 300gsm

Print size: H 23 cm x W 25.5 cm
Paper size: H 35 cm x W 38 cm

Suggested framed dimensions:
H 43 x W 45 cm (min)