Modern Nature, a series of frottage/monotype prints dedicated to the artist Derek Jarman.
Åse Vikse is a printmaker from the western coast of Norway, currently living in London where she studies MA Fine Art Printmaking at Middlesex University. In her practice, she investigates the perception of place and its inhabitants. The connection to a specific landscape can often be detected in her motifs through an ongoing search to interpret place, people and the memory of these.
Often carried out by printing plein air, she refers to her process-led practice as 'mapping'. She utilises the technique of frottage print to document the landscape she moves in and develops 'frottage maps' during her walks, which she later brings into the print studio to add a final layer – the walk itself – connecting the artist's movement in the landscape to the subsequent artist's map.
She is currently working on ‘Modern Nature’ – a series of artist’s maps dedicated to Derek Jarman. The series of prints has been developed during walks in Hampstead Heath where Vikse has been documenting the surface of the park, mainly focusing on trees, both fresh and deteriorating tree trunks.
In this series, the notion of 'Modern Nature' – a somewhat restricted and constructed image of the organic landscape – is being investigated. At the same time, she discusses the body that inhabits it, moves in it, observes it, and subsequently vanish into it. Here, Derek Jarman's connection to the West Heath is explored through the park he once frequented.
Exhibited here, near the place he came to find peace in the latter part of his life, the maps are yet again connected with the man they aim to interpret though in a different context, from a different view.’
