Series 1 – a new series of printed works on fabric by Anna Stephenson
When spending long days in her London studio, artist Anna Stephenson describes how she registers the different strengths of shadow that fall throughout the day. How does the steepness of a fabric’s curve look when facing the sun at 3pm compared to at sundown? For her new body of work, Stephenson photographed sections of garments, draped fabric, and folds of ribbon in various states of light and shade before having them digitally printed onto cotton twills, sateens, velvet, and ripstop. These pieces are then built and manipulated into sculptural forms that are worn by, held onto, tied, draped and pinned to the body.
Trained in fashion design and having worked extensively with images and film, Stephenson has a keen eye for imagery and its emotional impact. This is paired with a passion for printmaking and figure drawing, which bestows her unique and powerful understanding of the body. Interested in the measurements of the tailor, the mark-making of the draughtsman, the style of the designer, and the aesthetics of the photographer, Stephenson deploys these various ways of looking to create three-dimensional collages in which documented moments are layered and juxtaposed in what feel like live, shapeshifting, but ultimately ephemeral forms.
Fizzing somewhere on the boundary between two and three dimensional, Stephenson’s work plays with the viewer’s depth of perception. Combining silk and velvet in shades of carmine, indigo, viridian and canary yellow, as well as cotton and denim in more muted tones, these pieces appear to simultaneously recede and advance, drawing the viewer into what feels like sublime disorientation.
Stephenson’s process is rooted in a fascination with trompe l’oeil – an illusionistic technique that draws on art’s ability to dwell on the porous border between image and reality. Translating literally as ‘trick of the eye’, the trompe l’oeil deals in optical illusions, false semblances, and façades. Like both collage and photography, the trompe l’oeil deconstructs the very idea of looking. For Stephenson, it is used as a challenge, “not just to look but to see.”
With a body of work that both surprises and delights, Stephenson’s trompe l'oeil trickery is also full of care and tenderness. She describes using her hands to intimately drape fabric, loop ribbon and press out the creases in a jacket’s lapel, until “everything feels balanced and right”. She then captures the moment with her digital camera. More than a mere snapshot, she talks with urgency about the need to preserve gestural encounters that would otherwise be lost: “When they are 3D sculptures I find it hard to look after them, but when they are photographed they feel safe – they've been stopped in motion and fixed." As such, her photographic prints serve as moments of connection and documents of tactility.
When the printed fabric returns from the digital printer, Stephenson begins the process of collage by building the elements into a reformulated whole. Entering a performance-like collaboration with the model, she first tapes the prints to the body to see how its hooks, angles, curves and contours hold their weight. Stepping back to look at the composition, she then re-pins, re-ties and pads the pieces out until things feel balanced and the arrangement can be captured on camera for a second time. The moment, suspended once more.
Text by Celia Graham-Dixon