Pratt Contemporary
The London Original Print Fair 2016

PRATT CONTEMPORARY at the LONDON ORIGINAL PRINT FAIR 2016 - Stand 40

This year we are showing works by Ana Maria Pacheco (woodcuts), Hugo Wilson (etchings), Marcus Rees Roberts (etchings and monotypes), Kristian Krokfors (etchings and screenprints) and Alison Lambert (monotypes and drawings) - with a particular focus on four chiaroscuro woodcuts by Ana Maria Pacheco, Comedia 1-4 and new etchings by Hugo Wilson, The Hunt Portfolio.

Ana Maria Pacheco
Comedia 1-4. Chiaroscuro Woodcut
These images were inspired by the dances and songs of colonial Peru, such as the Son de los diablos. Performed by black dancers during the Catholic Feast of Quasimodo, it featured devils, some in the guise of monsters with horns and claws, others wearing grotesque masks, animal skins and feathers. Under the cover of carnival, these transformations and role-reversals (suggested in Pacheco’s prints by the wielding of a whip) represented spirited defiance of an imposed colonial culture and assertion of an independent identity.

Hugo Wilson
The Hunt Portfolio. Etching
The images in this portfolio of nine etchings are closely related to Hugo Wilson’s recent series of paintings which portray the most primal of all rituals, the hunt. Hunting scenes were popular with wealthy collectors in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They represented a kind of ‘trophyism’ and a way of displaying mastery over nature. These images of writhing, snarling forms, some recognisable, others indistinct, portray immense animal strength - but the hunter remains unseen.