ALISON BERNAL

Exhibitions

Memberships

2014​

•  Freshly Pressed, Craft Central   

• ELP Summer show ,Embassy Tea Gallery 

• National Original Print, Bankside          

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2015   

• Made- Morley Gallery, London

• East London Printmakers, Embassy                           Tea Gallery, London 

•  National Original Print- Bankside, London

•  Fifty Years of Artists Print, Bankside,London 

•  The Masters- Relief Prints, Bankside,   London                        

2016  

• National Original Print, London

•  International Print Biennale, Newcastle

•   Pushing Boundaries, Dublin                     

2017   

• Festival of Print, Art Pavilion, London

• MADE, Morley Gallery, London

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2018.   

• InprintPrintout, R.K.Burt Gallery, London

• Printmakers Council

• East London Printmakers

• InprintPrintout

Collections

• Victoria and Albert Museum

• Scarborough Museums Trust

Awards

• John Purcell Paper Award 2013

• Tutors Prize, Morley College 2017

Publications

• Making an Impression -Printmakers Council at Fifty

Statement

I first got the chance to use a press on my Foundation Course and I never forgot the thrill of transferring ink from metal to paper.  It was some time until I had the time and opportunity to return to it but now  printmaking has become my primary medium.  From the beginning I enjoyed learning to use the new materials and tools and I eventually I realised that like all creative practices there were endless possibilities in every method.  My work is often driven in a new direction by the chance discovery of a new effect while experimenting.

Before preparing any kind of plate I will draw, take photographs, make collages or monoprints to explore my ideas and imagery and  I usually make prints in a series, on a theme.  Previous work has included a set inspired by clouds using aquatint which gives the printmaker the opportunity to use a  wide range of tones.  I became fascinted by the monumental yet ephemeral nature of the movement of clouds across the sky and tried to capture some of that effect in those prints.  Research at the V and A  Museum  into the representation af clouds by other cultures and artists and a competion entry requiring a response to the gallery led me to embossing.  This is the impression af a plate without ink and gives a surface texture to the paper.

A short course on book making produced some small editions of artists' books based on my original source material of cloud formations.  Continuing with the embossing technique I combined this with relief printing for a series based on the building of the Olympic Park near my home in East London

My current work has it's genesis in Piranesi's Carceri (Prisons).   An exercise in restricting the printmaker to black ink only was a fruitful starting point for increasingly abstract forms and experiments using tranparent paper and printing on both the back and the front.  I am now working on making prints that are embossed on both sides, or layered using chîne collé or relief over intaglio.

For me the exploration of the formal elements of image making goes hand in hand with a fascination in the technical limits of materials and method.