Form Study (Opening Up) is a series of prints I recently developed as formal research into the use of unconventionally shaped printing plates in the photogravure technique – a process I have been enjoying exploring with great interest for some time. For these works, each sheet of paper is printed by running two plates under the printing press in a single pass, which demands particular precision during the printing process. This is then combined with methods of folding, curling or peeling the printed paper into three-dimensional configurations: two sheets are positioned together, with one partly curled back, opening up and allowing the prints to interact and combine into various graphic formations.
The basis for these prints are photographs I take routinely throughout the process when making sculptural works in the studio – photos that are not necessarily meant to be published but which serve to document the relatively slow and precise process of the techniques I use, as a way of recording the formal choices so that the production process can be analysed at a later stage – forms of study in themselves. Here, as prints, the imagery is rendered almost ornamental, reminiscent of the historical aesthetics associated with photogravure.
During the opening weekend of Opening Up, tables and chairs will be arranged both inside and outside the gallery, temporarily transforming the space into a functioning café. This gesture is a deliberate nod to HERMANY (2019-present), an ongoing project in which I embrace more collaborative ways of working – often sparked by a certain enthusiasm to host other artists in the form of exhibitions, concerts, performances, fashion shows, and most recently, an evening bistro that was run out of my basement for a month-long period. In a similar spirit, the presence of tables, chairs, crockery and a menu of consumable items serve as the essential ingredients of a café – shifting the gallery’s use and reshaping how the space is experienced. Pricing in Opening Up was categorised into different value brackets of either £1 or £2. Categorising the items is fictitiously[1] defined according to their ‘temporal weight’, reflecting not only differences in association, cultural significance and consumer expectation, but also the duration and lingering impact the item might have on one’s overall experience. Each item on the menu embodies a distinct relationship with time: items priced at £1 are typically associated with quick consumption and fleeting satisfaction – they are familiar, accessible and leave little lasting impression. In contrast, items priced at £2 tend to convey deeper associations, whether through tradition, ritual or perceived sophistication. They may take longer to consume, resonate longer, remain more present in memory, or be expected to provide a more layered experience. Tea and cake evoke memories, coffee grounds us in the fleeting present, while crisps flicker briefly before vanishing into the void.
Tea (£1) = A soft expansion of time; calm, reflective and continuous—turning a page into the past. Tea + Cake (total £3) = A moment of intentional pause; quiet celebration and shared presence—sitting between pages. Coffee (£1) = A compression of time; sharp, immediate, and forward-facing—turning a page into the future. Beer (£2) = A blurring of
time; sociable and slow at first, but prone to disorientation—hovering between pages. Wine + Beer (total £4) = A distortion or elongation of time; social, sensory, and immersive—folding time back on itself. Beer + Crisps (total £3) = An engineered shortcut to escape; time blurs and slips—the skipping of pages.
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1. How? Sipping while writing. A series of incidental meditations on flavours? No. The mouth opens up, to speak? Yes and no. Opens to let in and to let out. How? And what of this text? Is it being held? Spoken? Printed? Or on a screen? Is there nowhere to sit? Is anybody sitting here? What function should this text serve? Are you being served? It could (this text) suggest, as in, start like this: No sugar. No Milk. Or like this: You might enter the café, a space where time albeit regulated (opening hours) twists, folds, and unravels. The menu would stretch before you, perforated by bursts of steam in the air: £1, £2. Not prices, but markers of temporal space. A cup of tea, a slice of cake, a breath—it’s not sufficient sustenance, but a map of moments, defined not by taste but by their duration. Do you want a cup of tea? Does the item itself carry weight, or is it the quiet pull of perception that grounds you in its orbit? What are the associations? Folded napkins. To whom are these questions being asked? And dear reader, who are you? Start again: Tea, Coffee, Crisps. The fictional value of which could change considerably in the coming weeks. Tangent: Convenience: “The whole point of straws, I had thought, was that you did not have to set down the slice of pizza to suck a dose of Coke while reading a paperback,” writes Nicholson Baker in The Mezzanine, a book which formally determined the form of this brief intervention. In this fleeting gesture, time is compressed relative to thought as consumption, embedded within a series of seemingly insignificant actions. Back here, time doesn’t stretch; it collapses into the present, urgent and unfinished. A later thought on crisps (in particular salt and vinegar) the mouth is made clairvoyant. You know? A flash, watering, a momentary distraction in anticipation of something and then gone. Time is suspended, forgotten. Try again. Something like this: Time, perhaps, might only be understood in what slips away unnoticed, in what is lost and then only momentarily retrieved in the quiet spaces we cannot hold. Is this sufficient? Are you finished?
List of works:
Form Study (Opening Up) #1, 2025
Assemblage of four photogravures on two sheets of Arches Velin BFK Rives paper, 250 g
37 × 68 cm
Form Study (Opening Up) #2, 2025
Assemblage of three photogravures on two sheets of Arches Velin BFK Rives paper, 250g
37cm × 68cm
Form Study (Opening Up) #3, 2025
Assemblage of 4 photo etchings on 2 sheets of 250g Arches Velin BFK Rives paper
37cm × 68cm
Form Study (Opening Up) #4, 2025
Assemblage of two photogravures on two sheets of Arches Velin BFK Rives paper, 250 g
37 × 68 cm
Form Study (Opening Up) #5, 2025
Assemblage of four photogravures on two sheets of Arches Velin BFK Rives paper, 250 g
37cm × 68cm
Form Study (Mirror Box), 2025
Photogravure on Arches Velin BFK Rives paper, 250 g
37cm × 68cm
Opening Up was an exhibition that also served as a functioning café throughout Saturday April 12th 2025. Tea, coffee, beer, wines, cake and crips were served by Ffion Colquhoun-O'Brien who kindly waited tables all day. After the event the exhibition remained, and included print works on the walls, the café furniture stored, and menu's that also are a press text at the same time.
Photography by Ollie Harrop.
All images courtesy of Marlie Mul and 243 Luz, Margate.
Thank you to Ffion Colquhoun-O'Brien, Frank Wasser, Ed Leeson, Diego Garcia in Margate, UK and to Ivan Durt and Nathan Gotlib at MASEREEL in Kasterlee, BE.
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