John Angus

PRINTMAKER PROFILE

ARTIST STATEMENT

I designed and screen-printed posters for arts organisations throughout the UK, for over 20 years. Commissioners included: Arts Council England; Arts for Labour; Lancaster University concerts; Polka Theatre, London; Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester; Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra; Sherman Theatre, Cardiff; The Dukes, Lancaster; Welfare State International; Young Vic, London.
I was a member of the group of artists which formed Storey Gallery in Lancaster in 1991, later becoming Director, and curating a contemporary art programme. I am currently running this company, now called StoreyG2, commissioning projects about landownership.

An AA2A placement in the print department at the University of Lancashire in 2013-14 provided a most welcome opportunity for me to return to screen-printing after a gap of over 15 years.

The exhibited work is part of an ongoing exploration of portraits; frames; the symbolic role of art in the promotion and maintenance of social and economic power structures; the aesthetic and representational effects of the half-tone dot in image reproduction; and gold ink.

I produced a series of prints of “Indeterminate Portraits” from 2014 to 2016, in which each image includes a head and shoulders half-tone portrait in a frame, but the sitter is not identifiable. The images were derived from details of black and white reproductions in art history books of photographs of rooms in the palace of Versailles and in English country houses.

In 2017, I produced a series of screen-prints of “Frame Corners” based on photographs which I had taken in various UK art galleries for that purpose. “Frame Corner Lower Left” is from that series.

Frame Corner Lower Left

PREVIOUSLY SELECTED PRINTS