We are not wise, and not very often kind

For her second series with Art School, Katy Binks has created six unique screenprints. Printed on beautifully textured 300gsm Somerset Satin paper, these new works continue to explore her ongoing fascination of the relationship between art and the urban environment. 

The imagery in each work is taken from photographs captured by the artist around her South London studio. They often depict close ups of architectural features that become distorted into abstract shapes. After starting out as sketches or digital mock-ups, Binks harnesses the inherent playfulness of printmaking to create compositions that land in the space between intention and opportunity. She says that if she looks too hard, it will always remain just out of reach. Binks is not concerned with precision and instead celebrates the texture that the screenprinting process can generate. By using slightly blocked screens, poorly registered layers, and wonky lines she creates works that are full of texture and intrigue. To further heighten this, she has started to experiment with more nuanced colours and more layers that give the works an accomplished feel.  

Each of these works were made after an intensely difficult period of time in the artist’s life, heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic. After an extended time away from the studio Binks returned to produce work through a new lens. This new body of work, although not intentionally about grief, explores the spectrum of human emotions, from love and joy to sorrow and despair. Influences for this series vary from the world of Nick Cave as well as the art of the Dansaekhwa, the Korean monochrome art movement, while all the titles from this series come from Mary Oliver poems.