A SENSE OF PLACE

A  SENSE OF PLACE
My personal response to the Leicester Print Workshop forthcoming exhibition in the Autumn of 2106.

A SERIES OF REALISTIC LINOPRINTS ON PAPER AND EMBOSSED ALUMINIUM, AS A RESPONSE TO THE WAVE OF HUMAN SUFFERING AND MIGRATION CAUSED BY WAR.

These images question the role and safety of women at a time of conflict and mass migration. The sense of who we are, our sense of self is inextricably linked to our sense of place, or where we belong and feel safe. 

I started looking at transition and displacement with my first little print 'Hope' in 2015, seen below. 

The tree on the boat is a metaphor. The three components of the print, the boat, the tree and the sea are simple and universally understood, but their juxtaposition makes us look again and reflect. The tree symbolises a person who has been displaced or uprooted and through life changing events, forced to become a refugee. Anyone in that position cannot survive long without putting roots down somewhere. When they do, will they survive and thrive, create a meaningful life for themselves and their children and bear fruit?

Since then, the urgency I felt has transformed into a different kind of feeling. A feeling that I must say something about the people who have been displaced in our time. As well as our common humanity, my motives stem from my own family's history, as displaced people from the Greek towns of Asia Minor in the 1920's. 

I like to think that my sharing is a process of communicating, of letting people know a small part of history.  My family's  history of  enforced movement, of new beginnings and of a past seen through the mist of nostalgia and pain is still very much alive for me. I see it being played out in the new movement of humanity to the west. The same pained faces, the same sense of leaving it all behind, the same sense of desperation as my own grandparents felt.  

Although my main medium is painting, there is something very compelling about print. The physicality of it, the communal aspect of the workshop, as opposed to the painter's studio; these aspects make for a different output.  The embossing of aluminium is based on my exploration of Greek Orthodox votive offerings.  These are religious tokens, asking for divine intervention.

I have listed the sequence of images in this series with a brief description of each one...

THE LAND

The above entitled 'The Land' was my first ever attempt at a lino print that was realistic.  I used marks associated with high contrast photographs.  The surface was 'broken' as I used a rocking motion to pierce and lift the surface of the lino.  The image is both seductive and unsettling.  The vulnerability of the form and the setting are meant to ask the question of how this person came to be seen in this way? Is she safe and lying on her bed, or washed up some shore, scarred by human movement....

SISTER

Close up of the 'Sister' lino plate.

The second image that captured my attention is again from news coverage photographs.  The desperate embrace of this young woman and the toddler's swathed form are the focus. I have removed all other distractions as they appear against a black background. The rest of the world is immaterial. What is significant is this moment;  this brief moment of stolen joy, of  fleeting security and  the elusive sense of safety. 

'Sister' Linoprint on fabriano 285 gsm paper.

'Sister' embossed aluminium lino print.

MOTHER

This image shows a mother and her child. It is from newsreel images of refugees escaping conflict from the Middle East. In the original photograph,the boy was staring at the camera. Here, the eyes have been 'removed' and appear shut. There is a sense of exhaustion and mourning in this image, which moved me deeply. The male figure has an air of desperation. He is almost marginal in this exchange between mother and child.  We sense his impotent shame as he sits,  unable to protect those he loves. 

'Mother' Embossed aluminium lino print.

DAUGHTER

This plate was perhaps the most complicated one to carve. It is always difficult to judge how the marks you make on a lino plate will translate on paper. In this case, I tried to balance the quiet beauty of the eyes and the face with the grittiness of the uneven marks I was making in the plate. This face has a history.  No longer young, no longer optimistic. The face tells of the horror of war and human cruelty. A daughter. Someone's daughter, scarred by the experiences that have led to her fleeing the safety of her home, to find something better. Her hair is unkempt and wild, uncovered and for all to see. If she is a Muslim woman, then this in itself is an act of carelessness  or even defiance; but how can one maintain these conventions when one has only just managed to escape death?  This face with the defiant abundance of wild hair could also be seen as a metaphor; an affirmation of life and survival.

'Daughter' Embossed lino print on aluminium. Photographed on the drying rack.  The rack somehow  looks like a containment fence.

George Sfougaras July 2016