We were asked by Manchester Art Gallery to produce work for their group exhibition ‘Speech Acts’. Throughout this collaboration we worked very closely with Kate Jesson, the exhibition’s curator, and were pleased with the wonderful feedback we received from her, the Manchester Art Gallery team, and the artist Yara El-Sherbini.
Stage 1: PHOTOGRAPHY
Artist Yara El-Sherbini sent us this delicate sculpture as a self-portrait, for us to recreate as a life-size figurative work in print. Photographing the piece in a lifelike manner required a complex lighting setup to control shadow and detail, to ensure that we could scale the image up to a human-sized replica and retain all of the detail from the original.
Stage 2: PRINTING
The gallery curator Kate Jesson worked closely with us to select the paper for the prints. As the images have a vintage look it was decided that a matt finish would work best, and our 300gsm Klein Smooth Rag paper was chosen. This paper has a subtle texture that allows the fine detail in the image to be seen at it’s best.
Kate visited the studio to approve proofs of the print before we went on to produce the final large image and prepare it for dry mounting and framing.
STAGE 3: DRY MOUNTING
The Skit print was dry mounted to high quality 3mm aluminium composite panel - archival and very stable, essential for a work of this size.
To set the image back from the glass, deep spacers were used to give some depth to the work, whilst allowing the full image to fill the frame.
STAGE 4: FRAMING
Three sets of hands, an air compressor to remove dust, impeccable attention to detail and a lot of patience.
A deep black wooden frame was selected along with the superior quality TruVue UltraVue glass, to give the best visibly to the artwork from all angles, and enhance the depth effect of the image to really bring the piece to life.
The ‘Speech Acts’ exhibition ran from Friday 25 May 2018–Monday 22 April 2019.
FROM THE ARTIST:
“It was wonderful seeing my Skit sculpture take on a new life as a large scale photographic piece, seeing how the work was transformed. Klein imaging we fantastic in realising my vision exactly.”
– Yara El-Sherbini
