Yorkshire-based artist Clare Phelan works with etching, collagraph, and screen printing. Influenced by the post-industrial landscapes of Northern England, Clare works with coding-related artefacts such as textile jacquards, telegrams, music box discs and IBM punch cards. She treats these objects as carriers of narrative — their creases and corrosion telling stories of obsolete technologies and the people who once used them. The labour-intensive, traditional analogue printmaking methods she employs echo the effort embedded in these materials, while the binary language of the machine threads through her work as a sign of our digital age.
With QEST support, Clare will undertake non-toxic etching training with printmaker Andrew Baldwin at his studio in Wales. She aims to embed these environmentally responsible techniques into her own practice and pass them on through workshops for artists across West Yorkshire, Manchester and Lancashire, where ‘Baldwin’s Ink Ground’ is not yet widely used. Clare exhibits regularly across the UK and her work is held is private collections globally.
