This is an excellent exhibition by one of the country’s leading printmakers. We are really fortunate to have the show here in the city where Desmet was born.
The skill is amazing but so is the invention as she is forever looking for new challenges, new materials to print onto and improved methods.
There are many lovely and detailed pieces, its worth taking some time to study and enjoy them all.
‘Urban Evolution’ by Anne Desmet
at the Cornerstone Gallery, Hope University
9 October – 20 November 2009
Also – Closing Private Viewing – Friday 20 November 18-20.00
‘Urban Evolution’ features a broad range of work made by Anne Desmet in the last ten years demonstrating her fascination with the built environment. Her remarkable depictions of buildings and cities contain recurring themes of urban decay and renewal.
Her work also alludes to the deep time-cycles of the natural world, whilst her series of collages, distorting and reconfiguring her own engravings of the British Museum’s Great Court, refer to the processes of disassembly, regeneration and renewal that this renowned urban interior has undergone.
Desmet is renowned for pushing at the boundaries of printmaking practice, combining technical skill and architectural vision with great inventiveness. Her large-scale works – incredible in their detail – take months to complete. Equal to its technical excellence, her work ischaracterized by a fascination with process; there is conceptual game play around the methods and history of printmaking. Her collages play with the idea of the multiple and the unique work; for example, she creates prints, tears or cuts up some impressions and re-assembles them to make a finished one-off piece.
This exhibition was curated by the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, in association with Hart Gallery, London which represents Anne Desmet’s work. www.hartgallery.co.uk
