Hannah Tilson
Patterns and Printmaking
31. 7. – 12. 8. 23
The course stems from a passion for patterns. When you look, they can be found everywhere. Whether they are in the shadows, cutting darkly and sharply through a chain-link fence or falling and splicing through a building designed by Carlo Scarpa, the tiles of your kitchen or bathroom floor, symbolic patterns, visual language, the clothes you dress yourself in now or in years gone by, the wallpaper pasted on your walls... But also patterns in the light of habits and routines, the multi-layered processes enacted in the print studio. Through your chosen processes, you will find yourself inking, printing, carving, scraping, adding, erasing and repeating to achieve unexpected and exciting results.
We will begin by sharing image references, discovering patterns throughout art history: Katsushika ōi, Mary Cassatt, Jade Fadojutimi, Rachel Jones, Christina Quarles, Lubaina Himid, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Hilma Af Klimt and Kiki Kogelnik, to name a few. As a student, we ask you to bring a pattern that means something to you. These patterns can be found in fabrics, photographs you find interesting, in architecture, objects used in everyday life, or you can come to the course with an idea for a pattern to explore further during your time here.
Etching evolved from the desire to develop a way of recording patterns engraved onto suits of armour. People discovered that by filling the engraved lines with ink and pressing damp paper into the grooves, an imprint of the pattern would be made. This evolved to incorporate the use of acids to etch drawings and script on to metal plates. 600 years later, we are once again using the same process to record our own patterns.
Over the course of two weeks, alongside developing students' personal projects in the print room, we will partake in group exercises to spark new ideas, eliminate inhibitions and seek out new compositions. One of the activities will involve drawing from film, an exercise using cinematography to help us think about the staging, cropping, and composition of our works.
By introducing various methods of printmaking, we will demonstrate to our students the seemingly endless possibilities of working with an explorative approach to printmaking, allowing each student to incorporate these approaches in the way that best suits them. The nature of the print studio is stimulating, prolific and intensive. We will be working in a hands-on, energetic team environment and have regular group discussions, exchanging ideas and encouraging works to evolve. It is important to note that we will not be focusing on perfecting classical techniques, but instead will be exploring exciting new experimental printmaking techniques with the added elements of drawing and collage.
key data
- Venue
- Festung Hohensalzburg
- Date
- 31. 7. – 12. 8. 23
- Requirements
- Readiness to develop new and experimental ways of printmaking, you must be willing to work and share ideas in a group and work autonomously
- What to bring
- Drawing utensils, photographs/fabrics/drawings to work from, working clothes, sketchbook. It is not vital to bring the next materials we have listed, but if you already own them and would like to bring your own please do so: printmaking tools (lino/drypoint needles etc) watercolours/ watersoluble pencils for monoprinting, tissue paper for chine-collé, holey and textured materials like fruit netting/lace to use as stencils. Thin plastic sheets for drypoint and mono-prinit (preferably between 0.9 and 1.2mm thick). If you drink milk/juice please save and bring along the tetra pak (metallic lined cardboard) cartons!
- Co-teacher
- Otis Blease
- Medium
- Experimental print-making with the possibility of exploring various techniques (tetra pak, paper/fabric stencils, monoprint, chine-collé, frottage, collagraph) etching - including drypoint, aquatint and sugarlift.
- Teaching language
- English
Hannah Tilson
Hannah Tilson (born in 1995) lives and works in London. She graduated BA from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2018, studied on exchange at the New York Studio School and graduated from a postgraduate scholarship course at the Royal Drawing School in 2021. Tilson was artist in residence at Palazzo Monti in September 2022 and long-listed for the Ruth Borchard Self‑Portrait Prize in 2021.
Tilson works in a variety of media: painting, mixing raw pigments and binder, drawing, printmaking and embroidering. Building up layers of translucent and opaque colours, concealing and revealing parts of the image, Tilson camouflages herself in vibrating and fragmented spaces filled with patterns. She views her body and the fabrics encompassing her as a landscape/pattern of rhythmic and geometric forms. The figure disappears and reappears, sometimes being completely swallowed up by the fabrics and other times; a hand or a shoe surfaces, taking the viewer closer to their own reality. The ambiguous shapes become a changeable part of this layered world, allowing the viewer to question what they see. In this fast-moving, turbulent space, abstracted through the pattern lens, something seems familiar, yet abstract…Everything is not as it seems.
Education / Teaching experience
2022 ‘Personal Patterns’ course at Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts
2021–present Tutor for the Young Artists program, Royal Drawing School, London
2019–21 Royal Drawing School, London, Postgraduate
2021 Drawing at home - pattern still life, Printmaking at home - tetra pak, online workshops for ‘Energy Systems’, Well Projects
2014–18 Slade School of Fine Art, London, Bachelor’s in Fine Art
2016 New York Studio School, New York, exchange program
2013–14 Central Saint Martins, London, Foundation Diploma
Website
Exhibitions
Solo Exhibitions
2021 Swoosh, Well Projects, Margate (UK). 2017 Tongue and Chic, Peckham Pelican, London. 2016 Hannah Tilson Final Exhibit, NYSS, New York, NY (US).
Group Exhibitions
2023 Phantom Brush, A plus A, Venice. Cure3,Bonhams, London. London Art Fair, Advanced Graphics stand, London. 2022 London Art Fair, Advanced Graphics booth, London. DREAM BABY DREAM, Paint talk at Fitzrovia gallery, London. 2021 Best of the Drawing Year, Christies, London. Small is Beautiful XXXIX, Flowers Gallery Cork Street, London. Salvaje Y Dulce, Badr El Jundi Gallery, Marbella (ES). Ruth Borchard Self Portrait Prize, Artsy. The Drawing Year End of Year Exhibition, Royal Drawing School, London. The Drawing Room, Berntson Bhattacharjee, London. Pacific Breeze II, White Conduit Projects, London. ArtUk Auction, Online. Original Paper Works, Online. 2020 Cure3, Bonhams, London. London Art Fair, Advanced Graphics both, London. 2019 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London. Guts Gallery Inaugural Exhibition, Guts Gallery, London. Voi rubate del tempo alla fretta a noi il mare ci impone lentezza, Castro Projects, Rome. 18/11/1, PMQ, Hong Kong. 2018 Paper Cuts, The Saatchi Gallery, London. The Lotus Eaters, Aindrea Contemporary, London. BA Degree Show, Slade School of Fine Art, London. Hot Milk, Post Institute, London. The Pink Panther Show, Gallery 46, London. 2017 From Cornucopia, Center for Recent Drawing, London. 2016 Art is the Highest Form of Hope, NYSS, New York. Topless Palaces, NYSS, New York. Legumes, 4 Malden Road, London.
Publications
Publications
Inside the Artist’s Studio, Art on a Postcard, 2022
Architectural Digest Spain, December, 2022
"5 Minutes with Hannah Tilson”, in: Elephant Magazine, Emily Steer, 25 Oct. 2021
“It’s a date: Hannah Tilson”, in: Contemporanea, Alberta Romano, Issue 04/05/06/ 2021
“The Art of Drawing featuring Hannah Tilson”, in: Berntson Bhattacharjee, January Spotlight, 2021
“Minnie Kemp asks: why do we collect things?”, in: Living etc. Magazine, Minnie Kemp, Issue 11/2020
“Isolation Interview with Hannah Tilson”, in: Seam Agency, 2 Sep. 2020
