Anne James admires an exhibition of screen print birds, and of boards

The shop at the Old Fire Station is hosting work by Claire Duffy. She is a freelance printmaker and illustrator who is exhibiting a delightful series of screen prints of birds: birds associated in some way with the British Isles.

Each print is in a limited edition of ten, and each coloured and titled in a way that reflects the call and characteristics of each bird.

Robin Redbreast – Chat – “tic” is portrayed as a plump little fellow, feathered chest distinguished from his other plumage by a series of deconstructed marks that comprise his distinctive breast, while his red, almost avuncular, presence carries an indomitable charm and appeal. Grey Partridge – Partridge – “kreerric”, Duffy describes as a ground-dweller that would rather run away than fly. She has captured from the rear his black tail feathers, providing a gentle yet determined focus to his preferred direction of pedestrian travel. Purple Sandpiper – Wader – “trit trit”, presents a tentative persona anxiously scanning its section of coastline for predators, or perhaps more happily for its next meal.

Each portrait captures the characteristics of the bird with skill and humour, showing each in quirky and unusual ways that accentuate and comment on their habits, habitats and indeed their essence.

Duffy is early in her career and still exploring ways in which to use her skills. In this spirit the exhibition includes three lampshades she has made, decorated with a delicate repeat pattern of dark blue feathers that appear to float, gossamer light, across the surface. The simple white background of the temporary OFS gallery space provides the perfect setting to explore and enjoy Miranda Creswell’s Chop Marks, a beautiful and original body of work. There are 14 pieces in all, the majority composed of chopping boards whose inherent markings she has used by translating them into imagined landscapes.

The idea for the exhibition came from her involvement as an artist in an ongoing research project called EnglaID. Run by archaeologists at the Univer-sity, this is a big data project, one that is examining the changes and the continuities in the English landscape between 1500BC and 1086AD, as recorded by the marks humans have left on the environment.

As part of her discipline as an artist, Creswell has kept a daily diary for a number of years. But this is no ordinary diary, as every day she draws, not writes, drawing the landscapes she has seen that day and their impact on her.

Recently she found herself with two old chopping boards, and she recalled the meals she had prepared and shared, courtesy of the plethora of marks in the wood. Her search then started for other boards with which she could work. These proved surprisingly hard to find: people do not recycle old chopping boards.

However, she has been able to amass a dozen or so. Each she has impregnated with powdered graphite, overlaid in white. This treatment brings out the graphic nature of the cuts and chop marks which she then works on, using her diary of landscapes to enhance each to create clear evocative images of time, seasons and space. Illustrated here is her Across a water landscape 2013, where the piece takes the eye to the destination at its centre. Creswell says it owes much to her love of the Hebrides and the slow pace of arrival as the small craft makes its patient way through the waters. In Beginning of a day 2013, she subtly captures the cold creams and greys of an early dawn. Subtlety is a hallmark of each of her pieces, including Long landscape 2, 2013, where hills long, cold and grey take command of the horizon.

The exhibition is dominated by a large piece in graphite on paper, its size determined by the size of Creswell’s studio: the paper is the size of one of the walls. And the graphite she has used is collected from her studio floor. Entitled Moving through a moving landscape 2014, she explores how it feels to journey through terrain, by capturing the brief glimpse afforded as each step is taken, and alongside this the physical response of plants and earth to this intrusion.

Creswell’s originality of approach, the unusual materials she uses and the way in which she constructs each piece makes her body of work a real delight.

Claire Duffy is leading a Big Draw event from 2pm-4pm at the OFS on Saturday and her work continues beyond the exhibition featuring in a Christmas Art and Craft Market that OFS is promising in the coming weeks.

Chop Marks
Miranda Creswell
Avifauna 
Claire Duffy
Old Fire Station, Oxford
Tuesday-Saturday. Until November 8