11/05/2021
Mary Anne Francis, Squires 2021, 29.7 x 42 cm, 11.7 x 16.5 in, Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag
From the series Abstract Extracts, a new set of limited edition prints by Mary Anne Francis.
As the title of the series might propose, and sometimes, the shapes too, these designs have an origin outside the realm of pure form. Or: they have several origins which have offered raw material and a process of mediating that respectively.
In terms of their derivation, the designs are coded readings of pages from other artists' scrapbooks; the artistic outcome of an attempt to understand the way in which artists such as Hannah Höch, Burroughs & Gysin, and Eddie Squires, among others, used different materials in their practice of this form. Produced in the first place by the artist for a book to be published by Bloomsbury – 'Mixed Forms in Visual Culture: from the Cabinet of Curiosities to Digital Diversity' – and supplied in that context with a key to the use of colours and an introduction, they can be seen as art-theory.
Presented here without that apparatus, they might be enjoyed for the way in which they underline the scrapbooks’ material diversity and formal achievements, while also translating the figurative into the abstract.
This is work that seeks to probe the differences and overlaps between art and art-theory; the purely optical and the practical when those distinctions may rely much on the productive power of context. Mary Anne Francis’ book 'Mixed Forms in Visual Culture: from the Cabinet of Curiosities to Digital Diversity' will be published December 2021.
Mary Anne Francis is an artist and writer. A concern with the idea of editions has run through her practice since she graduated with a BA in Fine Art & Critical Studies from Central St. Martin’s College of Art & Design. She has produced a range of artist’s books (sometimes under pseudonyms) which have been stocked in many London art bookshops and reviewed in periodicals such as Art Monthly, and postcards – which feature in Jeremy Cooper’s 'Artists’ Postcards' with one now held by the British Museum.
She was represented by The Multiple Store with the limited edition High Art Light; the collection is now archived with Tate. She has work in many public and private collections. Handel Street Projects have shown a number of Mary Anne’s multiples: as part of the gallery’s 'Farmer’s Market' shows, and,
with Multiple Multiples (2014), in their 'Multiple Market' exhibition. With a PhD in Fine Art from Goldsmiths,
Mary Anne currently teaches at the University of Brighton on Fine Art degrees. She publishes her first book with Bloomsbury this autumn: 'Mixed Forms in Visual Culture: From the Cabinet of Curiosities to Digital Diversity'.
https://tinyurl.com/ygkszjmh
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