Look Away

2014
Lino-cut Print


Images: © Tim Etchells

Look-Away---Tim-Etchells---Lino-Print-2014---Image-Courtesy-of-the-Artist-72pdi

This limited edition lino-cut print was created to mark the Live Art Development Agency’s 15th Anniversary.

The text which comprises the work reads simply LOOK AWAY, the letters formed as negative space in the bold red print. Look Away is almost a manifesto piece for Etchells – a work that demands attention and the active engagement of reading but which at the same time attempts to negate or prevent its own consumption. A language act which appears to undermine and contradict its own status as statement, Look Away also pulls us to the heart of a confusion about its own double meaning; in one sense inviting us to look away (cease looking, avert the gaze) and, in another, extending an invitation to ‘look away’ (look all we like, look to our heart’s content). Viewing the work, we’re caught in a circular set of transactions between the text, meaning and the object, pulled back and forth in a spiral that playfully questions our roles as readers, viewers and spectators. Finally, Etchells’ Look Away speaks directly and pertinently into the context of LADA’s Anniversary editions, drawing attention as it does to the flows of attention and address, and the dynamic pulls and pushes of watching performance itself.

Purchase this edition here.

About Tim Etchells’ Drawings and Prints
As in his neon and LED pieces, Etchells’ drawings and prints often draw on his broader fascinations as an artist, writer and performance maker, exploring contradictory aspects of language – the speed, clarity and vividness with which it communicates narrative, image and ideas, and at the same time its amazing propensity to create a rich field of uncertainty and ambiguity.

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