ARTISTS TALKING

Eschewing the familiar exhibition dynamic of works united by theme or style, Northern Print has brought together this four-artist showcase to illustrate the wide range of techniques employed by local printmakers.

In Eunice Routledge’s Shore series, the very process of creation is brought to the fore. The artist loses herself in the rhythm of pressing and repressing, creating mesmerising pools of light and coagulated depths of primordial darkness. Although fairly small in scale, each piece hints at a wider landscape of light and shadow, and our attention is held by the nuances of tone in the diaphanous pigment. Less successful are the etchings collectively entitled Island, worlds, constellations, in which compositional gimmickry – mimicking the random placement of stones on a beach – distracts from the more subtle elements that make her other series so engaging.

A number of items of clothing and jewellery by Bronwen Deane and Josie Brookes are also on display. Deane’s delicate jewellery draws on the saturated colours of cheerful 1950s and 1960s stock photography, combining it with skilfully crafted silverwork – although her necklace and ring covered in images of industrial Newcastle perhaps err on the wrong side of kitsch. Brookes, meanwhile, contributes a varied selection of her leather belts and badges decorated with striking graphic imagery, which proved such a success at the latest Edinburgh festival.

Sara Ogilvie’s Tobacciana prints provide the most entertaining works on show. Her diverse and often sinister subjects are united in their love of – or dependence on – smoking, in its myriad forms. In one, a bear with glazed eyes stumbles through moonlit woods, puffing vacantly on a corn-cob pipe; in another, a man watches pensively as black shisha pipes twist and coil threateningly around him. Like illustrations torn from some macabre children’s book, these exquisite, dreamlike images entice and unnerve in equal measure.