Baskin Hughes Archive Project
October 2011 - March 2012
Funded by Heritage Lottery Fund
FEATURING :
DOUBLE ELEPHANT’S PRINT ON PRESCRIPTION GROUP
THE UNIVERSITY OF EXETER’S ARTS & CULTURE TEAM AND STUDENTS’ ART SOCIETY
STUDENTS FROM KING EDWARD VI COMMUNITY COLLEGE, TOTNES
FREEFALL YOUTH ARTS GROUP, EXETER PHOENIX
YOUNG MASTERPIECES YOUTH ARTS GROUP, HONITON
This was an exciting collaborative project that brought together a wide range of participants and organisations. It used printmaking and poetry to inspire new work as well as to help young people learn to curate and manage their own exhibitions.
The inspiration was the Ted Hughes’ collection of Leonard Baskin prints and the two artists’ correspondence held at the the University of Exeter’s Special Collections. The powerful relationship between Hughes and Baskin created beautiful complex works. We wanted to look at this fantastic collection on our doorstep and explore how these artists of different media found a common ground and inspired each other to greater heights.
The participants visited the collection and used the prints and letters as a starting point to create a multitude of prints in varying processes (drypoint, lino, woodcut, lithography) as well as a film screening and talk with Noel Chanon who filmed Baskin and Hughes’ collaboration.
The Print on Prescription participants worked for the first time on a shared large-scale linocut and relished the opportunity to use this collection as inspiration. Their work, alongside prints created by the Art Society students formed the exhibition, Crow Dialogue at The Ariel Centre, Totnes.
A second exhibition, Based on Baskin, was held at Kay House, University of Exeter, featuring the work of the young people’s groups as well as reproductions of Baskin prints. DEPW’s role was also to support the undergraduates to deliver printmaking workshops for younger students and to curate and hang this show.
Print on Prescription’s large scale piece is now on show at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital.
A lasting impact from the project has been artist Steven Paige’s 2012-13 residency at DEPW using the Baskin Hughes archive. His work was exhibited at the Forum at Exeter University in 2013.
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE: STEVEN PAIGE
Artist Steven Paige was our resident artist at Double Elephant from 2012 - 2013, tasked with responding to the Leonard Baskin & Ted Hughes archive based at University of Exeter. Not a regularly practising printmaker, his approach to the residency is as much conceptual as materials based.
For a workshop, Steven presented aspects of the archive that he has found intriguing – namely how Baskin worked and corresponded with Hughes, how text/writing works with the image including the notion of the press or publishing of works and, as it was auspiciously Halloween, how a healthy approach to mortality gave rise to a rich field to explore. For the workshop these ideas were explored further to encourage fresh approaches to making work.
