Loraine Monk United Kingdom
My visual arts practice derives from a sense of place and community anchored in politics and experiences of a working-class background. Printing offers me the materiality and medium to experiment with images of strength and violence, representing tactile anger in keeping with present times. I make woodcuts, lino and wood engraving, as well as the traditional medium of etching and aquatint.
Statement Curator space Loraine Monk’s visual arts practice derives from a sense of place and community. Originally a painter, she now creates images using both relief and etching processes.
She uses an archaeological process of digging deep into power relations, and its representations in artistic practice. It is an exploration of how the viewer might look below the surface, literally uncovering the inequality of power relations that occlude the histories of certain people, places and ideas.
Her family were working-class Londoners; inspired by local and community history, her background has influenced her politics, academic research and artistic practice.
Having moved from painting to printing she uses the act of cutting to make tactile, the visceral anger of inequality and political disengagement.
Previously exploring the inequality of power relations and occlude histories of certain people, places and ideas. She completed one series on Protest movements and then explored the climate crisis and the threatened extinction of both animals and humans. She created a series of etchings exploring animal/human hybrids. Combining iconic imagery together to create narratives of transformation.
Recently she has expanded her practice to include wood engraving as well as working in Lino and wood cuts. She spends a lot of her work in the studio developing metal etching plates, as well as using Drypoint etching and mono printing.
She has exhibited in London, Brighton, Sweden and Germany and completed a residency at Kingston Museum, London (January 2020).
Artwork
Cutting, Aquatint, 2021, 180