AMBruno
I'm telling you stories. Trust me
Limited Edition Prints

AMBruno presented a collection of limited edition prints in Multiplied 2013 at Christies, South Kensington, London, 18-21 October 2013.

Proposals were invited for an editioned print, to be made in response to the project brief by John McDowall: I'm telling you stories. Trust me. with in mind, maybe, the likely unreliability of representation and narrative, to tell/un-tell a story in a single plane of vision. The line I'm telling you stories. Trust me. is reiterated throughout Jeanette Winterson's novel The Passion, and is a very apposite encapsulation of the project; though acknowledged, it was not an indication that this novel should be the source of the work.

The prints are in a variety of techniques and processes, including etching, photography, screenprinting, digital, linocut, letterpress and woodcut. The image size and proportions vary, but the paper size is constant at 36 x 46 cm in portrait format, and each print is in an edition of 25.

To accompany the suite of prints, there was a display of sixteen recent book works by AMBruno artists Louise Atkinson, Karen Blake, Marco Calí, Claire Deniau, Kathryn Faulkner, Judy Goldhill, Barbara Greene, Jane Grisewood, Ingrid Jensen, Julie Johnstone, Lydia Julien, Sharon Kivland, Sophie Loss, John McDowall, Shelley Rae, and Cally Trench and Philip Lee.

The complete suite of the prints was purchased to be displayed at a new boutique hotel in Cheltenham.

AMBruno presented prints by 18 artists: Louise Atkinson, Karen Blake, Marco Calí, Claire Deniau, Kathryn Faulkner, Ruth Fettis, Judy Goldhill, Barbara Greene, Jane Grisewood, Lydia Julien, Sharon Kivland, Philip Lee, Sophie Loss, John McDowall, Sumi Perera, Shelley Rae, Peter Rapp, and Cally Trench.

Multiplied is a fair devoted exclusively to contemporary art in editions, featuring prints, photography, artists' books and 3D multiples.

Louise Atkinson - Tasseography Alphabet The work explores the concept of allegory, described by Walter Benjamin as an aggregation of signs which represent fleeting and fragmentary truths. The Tasseography Alphabet therefore depicts a set of symbolic images as a divination tool in order to express the way in which we continually try to disseminate received knowledge. Digital print and Chine-collé.

Karen Blake - White Cube at Sea The cube is an unlikely intervention in a natural landscape. And perspective is just another story that we author, the eye sees what it expects, and the mind constructs its own monumental landscapes. In truth this is a humble salt lick, offered to the sea, and soon swallowed up. Digital print.

Marco Calí - Ape The third in a series that take Aesop's tales and run amok. 3-colour screenprint on Somerset Photo Rag 300gsm.

Claire Deniau - It's a long story. A space in between image and writing. Imaginary is solicited. The story becomes an individual experience. Etching.

Kathryn Faulkner - Trying to draw clouds with the sun This photograph combines an interior and exterior view by working experimentally with a pinhole camera. The story implicit in the image suggests a journey from near to far, and invokes the idea of a transition through time and space by drawing with the sun at the end of the day. Photography / digital C-type print.

Ruth Fettis - Compartido Santiago de Chile. Our first meeting. Her stories are woven into the lace of the table. Wild dogs that roam the streets, students still protest, migrants arrive on ships, never to return. I'm telling you my side of the story - trust me. Linocut on Japanese paper.

Judy Goldhill - NGC 297 (New General Catalogue) This print, apparently, of NGC 297 was recently found in a cabinet belonging to the astronomer E.E. Barnard. It shows an irregular nebula in the constellation of Cygnus. The discoverer of the print has subsequently denied that the image was created by the impact of a gull on a glass plate. Letterpress print on Fabriano 210 gsm paper.

Barbara Greene - Siege Medieval castles are associated with Gothic romantic fairy tales. This image shows the inner courtyard of Skipton Castle in North Yorkshire, where Lady Anne Clifford and her supporters held out against Oliver Cromwell and his roundheads for three years in horrific conditions. Digital and screenprint.

Jane Grisewood - There Not There Countless birds have untimely deaths flying low and crashing into glass screens and windows, leaving an eerie absence/ presence. The camera captures the traces, which mysteriously appear: ghostly, animated and unmistakably visible. This photograph tells the story of one such bird that flew too close to the ground. Giclée debossed print on 255gsm Somerset Velvet paper.

Lydia Julien - Faith Taking the line 'I'm telling you stories. Trust me' quite literally; I am interested in children's emotions as they read books. They go on a journey of faith with the writer, and in a particularly grim tale the reaction is often unfiltered, mouths smile or lips curl, eyes widen. Woodblock print.

Sharon Kivland - LA LISEUSE A woman is reading, la dame en blanc. She is wearing a liseuse. She is a reader and she wears a reader. Archival digital and inkjet print on Hahnemuhle paper.

Philip Lee - Stories in the Dark Story telling doesn't need technology. Stories may be told in the dark with only a mouth to speak and an ear to listen. Stories in the Dark are symbolic of the act of story telling; the subject, medium, and material of each print are the body; narrative and image-making are reduced to their simplest.. Ink body print.

Sophie Loss - First Poem of Emptiness A response to the first of Anatoly Korolyov's Three Poems of Emptiness in Russian. Vertical drawn lines and a blocked out white lacuna - corresponding to words I do not understand. Screenprint on Fabriano 300gsm.

John McDowall - Bruges-la-Morte A story of deception and self-deception, in the novel Bruges-la-Morte by the Symbolist writer Georges Rodenbach, unacknowledged source of the book D'entre les morts by Boileau-Narcejac which was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock as Vertigo, and of water, time and photography. Archival inkjet print.

Sumi Perera - XXX pcs Ag [30 pieces of Silver] (iv) The 2013 James Joyce commemorative coin features a misquoted sentence from Ulysses. Reflecting on the validity of storytelling, in this print, the quote has been replaced with an anagram of another Joyce quote: 'A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery'. Etching, aquatint and embossing.

Shelley Rae - Persecuted Heroine 501B In my photographs, childhood memory and make-believe form an uncanny presence amongst darker themes of abandonment and fear. Persecuted Heroine 501B alludes to traditional folklore categorised by the Aarne-Thompson tale type index. It was shot on discontinued Kodak infrared film, transforming into an archival holder of narrative and history. Black and white photograph digitally printed.

Peter Rapp - The Unicorn This is one of a series of linocuts inspired by The Book of Imaginary Beings by Borges. It is a retelling of the bestiary and the stories that inspire it. My linocut attempts to give life to the many stories that the unicorn has inspired from Pliny to the Faerie Queen, through da Vinci and Borges.

Cally Trench - Sphinx Skeleton shows the skeleton of a mythical creature, whose bones are laid out as if discovered during an archeological excavation. This print is not an anatomical reconstruction; it is the endpoint of a narrative. We read stories about creatures that, if they existed in reality, would die as well as live. Linocut on watercolour paper with hand-painted gold eye.