Mr Darren Bryant

This presentation aims to share insights into my ongoing artist's book practice and initiate discussions on how I continue to merge old and new print technologies to interrogate ideas surrounding 'the aura of the original'. This presentation highlights individual studio-based research interests in how artists' books can control how we read them. The formal structure of a book (physical or virtual) can control how we handle it and interact with its content, open and closed. I will discuss how I have adopted what Susan Stewart (1993), in her book titled 'On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection', analyses how everyday objects can be narrated to realise the world around us. Stewart explores the tension between 'here' and 'not here,' 'now' and 'then,' observing that when objects are removed from their origin and time frame, they can be defined as incomplete, generating a sense of desire and, in the case of a print copy, trigger a longing for the original. (Stewart,1993, p. 136). Recent books titled, 'The Time Travellers Manual (now and then), and ‘Trace’ (2025), will be focused on to provide evidence of how research in this project has moved away from a sense of the photograph as a container for holding a specific impression, or reliable document. This presentation will discuss how images and objects are never seen as a pure impression but are layered into the chemistry of the bookmaking process and printmaking studio, where the miniature becomes gigantic.

This presentation aims to share insights into my current HDR project and initiate discussions that lie in the field of the merging old and new print technologies. The project builds on existing knowledge and identifies how dialectical debates surrounding aura and reproductive practices continue to be of influence. This paper also presents the idea that objects from my childhood can also arouse an experience of aura. By utilising my own collection of objects as a point of unpacking my past, I turn to printmaking to examine how an auratic encounter with them can be seen and developed into a series of prints and artists’ books: A process enabling me to re-examine questions on social norms, connected to accepted or expected expressions of identity.

I will discuss how I have adopted what Georges Didi-Huberman calls ‘opposing dialectical tension’ to create a sense of the ‘auratic’ experience. By examining multiplicity within paper folding and print reproduction, I aim to encounter my own ‘auratic trace’ associated with the opposing tensions as ever-present companions of familiar/unfamiliar, presence/absence, original/copy, similarity, and difference. Recent altered books titled Fold Vol. 1 (2018), and Fold Vol.2 (2020) will be discussed as case studies associated with haptic printed overlays, and stacked sequential arrangements of images as boxed paper folds: A research project that holds outcomes in the interplay between identity, memory, and nostalgia, connected to aura and reproduction.

Didi-Huberman, Georges, 2005. “The Supposition of the Aura: The Now, The Then and Modernity”, In Walter Benjamin and History, edited by Andrew E. Benjamin and translated by Jane Marie Todd, Continuum, New York. 3-18.

Serigraphy, also known as screenprinting, is a printing method that employs a woven mesh to support an ink-blocking stencil to create a desired image. "Serigraphy" is a compound word derived from Latin "sēricum" (silk) and Greek "graphein" (to write or draw). Screenprinting is a printing method in which a mesh is used to transfer ink onto a substrate, except in areas made impermeable to the ink by a blocking stencil. A bade or squeegee is moved across the screen to fill the open apertures in the mesh with ink.
Screenprinting, a relatively recent development as a fine art process, traces its origins back to perhaps the oldest form of printing—the stencil. It was initially used as a popular method for printing expensive wallpaper on linen, silk, and other fine fabrics. Western screen printers established secretive, defensive, and exclusionary business policies designed to keep the knowledge and techniques of their workshops concealed. Screenprinting is arguably the most versatile of all printing processes. Since basic screenprinting materials are so affordable and easily accessible, it has been widely used in underground settings and subcultures, and the homemade appearance of such DIY culture screen prints has become a significant cultural aesthetic seen on movie posters, record album covers, flyers, shirts, commercial fonts in advertising, in artwork, and elsewhere.
During this presentation, an interactive water-based screenprinting workshop will invite participants to print with prepared image- and text-based silkscreens to create poster designs using the serial nature of printmaking, resulting in a series of unique, themed wayzgoose posters.