Double Vision – Mapping Dürer in a Time of Crisis - Raymond Arnold & Ian Westacott
Artist Talk 2pm Saturday 1 October 2022
‘The modern world comes to us faster than we can analyse it. In fact, A N Whitehead expresses it clearly when he said, ‘We experience far more than we can understand’.
Ian Westacott and Raymond Arnold have been working on an etching project for twenty-five years in which they have been trying to fix, through the etching process, a series of precise moments in the tumultuous world around them. It is at once an analytical process of observation and structured line – ‘looking and putting’ as it were – but there is also much more, however, in the serendipitous nature of the project where chance and coincidence come into play.
The copper etching process, that ‘niche craft’, is an ideal medium to bridge these different qualities. Within its autographic and signatory nature, it allows for complex rendering, calligraphic gesture, a woven/textural display and confirms the capacity of the print to ‘shadow the world.’ – Raymond Arnold, 2022
