Magnificent Bodies
Artist’s book in archival box with print to inner and brass title plate to exterior (Negative Press London, 2024)
Magnificent Bodies is an archival box with artist’s book showing dead insects reproduced at an enormous scale. The work responds to the 60% drop in UK flying insect numbers in the last 20 years. Printed on insect wing-like tracing paper, individual insects’ bodies overlay with others, creating futuristic fictional super-large super-flies.
Readdressing my archive, insects were cut out from photographs I recorded in my home 18 years ago when there was an abundance and diversity of insects to document. Now there simply isn’t.
Insects’ minute bodies were magnified to become huge and magnificent to show the unique beauty of each individual insect, the process of enlarging deteriorating the image’s quality, undermining the portrait of each insect as much as their lives are under threat, by eg insecticides and climate collapse. Experimenting with hand-printing on tracing paper led to creating watercolour-like impressions of insects.
The prints are inspired by illustrations from Robert Hook’s 1655 book Micrographia, the first book to include large illustrations of insects and plants as seen through microscopes.
Edition of ten. Handprinted and hand-assembled to order. Bound or unbound. Supplied in archival print box with double-print fixed to interior and brass title plate to exterior. Certificate of authenticity.
For purchase enquiries contact info@neg-press.com
Publication date 18 October 2024. Launched at BOP, Bristol.
Magnificent Bodies: 28pp, size 29.7cm W x 42cm H. FSC certified Frisk tracing paper, Munken Pure, FSC-certified. Archival box, 43.5cm L x 32cm W x 1.5cm H. Brass title plate to box, 6cm W 1.8cm H. Brass binding screws (four). Interior print: size 29.7cm W x 42cm H. FSC certified Frisk tracing paper and FSC-certified Colorplan card.
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