Interval,2020

With a keen interest in documenting the details, rather than providing the viewer with the full picture, Jodie Wingham’s large Mokulito print looks at the subtle clues our gestures can reveal and how these can be read. The hands have often been considered visual signs to others about what we may be feeling at that particular moment in time, here they are gripping each other as if deep in thought however, the narrative is left to the viewer to decipher. Large in scale the hands demand attention, filling the space, each detail and line carefully documented to be investigated. Constructed from 6 separate plates the image appears folded, slotted together like the fingers themselves resting against each other. These lines refer back to the title, Interval, a period between two events or the space between two points much like the thumbs that rest against each other.

Mokulito or what is known as Wood Lithography is a relatively new technique within printmaking originating in the 1970’s in Japan. The process itself is labour intensive creating the image from the artists own photographs, transferring this onto a plywood plate, processing and leaving it for several weeks to mature and then printing the image for the final result. The process allows for seductive washes and marks to be created which is commonly associated with the lithographic technique, the material allows for another element to be included, the visual reference of the wooden grain. Specifically chosen for this particular image, the process allows the woodgrain to become part of the image, these delicate lines bare a visual similarity to the lines of our hands referencing back to the image. What this particular gesture reveals is left open to question, asking whether what is revealed refers to a universal language we all come to understand and be able to read or is based more on our subjective experiences.