HIGH ROLLER SOCIETY
10 PALMERS ROAD
LONDON E2 0SY
10, 17 and 24 July 2010 (at time of writing, 24 July is next Sat)
photos: NoLionsInEngland
When Graffoto professes ignorance of something, deep rooted fundamental mental blankness is only the start. Screenprinting is a term whose meaning hadn’t troubled us too much. Whatever it was, the result could be an object of beauty to grace the living room or, depending upon artist and taste, something even the late Bobby Sands wouldn’t have had on the wall of his cell.
High Roller Society is holding a series of Saturday afternoon workshops demonstrating the basics of monoprinting, screen printing and linoprinting.
NoLions in the inquisitive and fascinated company of Little Miss NoLions and a dozen or so other printing affecionados revelled in yesterday’s screenprinting exposition by the ever wonderful printer to the stars Aida of Aidaprints.
With two printing frame thingies set up in the gallery, Aida demonstrated printing on paper, canvas bags, teeshirts and a blended colour print on paper.
The group was inducted into the East London Anti Graffiti Network, a clandestine graffiti vigilante group evidently dealing graffiti everywhere it – sorry – dealing WITH graffiti everywhere they go. Over the course of the three hour session everyone had lots of goes at printing the network’s ironic logo onto paper, canvass bag and teeshirts.
Aida has been printing since she was an embryo, starting in her bedroom and destroying her bathroom in the process. There are a million different technical aspects which she is the master of and during the course of the afternoon we heard lots about registration, paper shrinkage, ink mixing, water spray research and development(!), the dangers of keeping urea in water bottles and Poundland double-sided sticky tape. The bit about heat lamp selection sounded a lot like the project proposal for an attic cannabis nursery. This had me pondering a new circular conundrum: which came first, the artist or the dope-head?
The event was fun, informative and superbly put together, we owe thanks to High Roller Society Gallery for setting the series up and Aida and John for their time both on the day and also preparations prior to the event. The final workshop of the series covers linoprinting and takes place next Saturday 24 July, more details from the High Rollers Society website here. Also, various High Roller flicks including the various workshops here
PS – there are some stunning APs and low edition prints on sale at High Roller Society, check out the shit in the racks, the “shop” page on the High Roller Society website isn’t even the half of it. Simply mind-blowing.