Alastair Keady

What’s this all about then?


Alastair is a graphic design graduate of NCAD and the Royal College of Art. He’s worked as a designer, and design educator, for far too long to dwell on. He makes prints, out of the Damn Fine Print studio in Stoneybatter, which he hand prints in small editions, or sometimes, as one-offs. He gets enormous enjoyment out of resolving print pieces, and hopes that others get as much enjoyment out of living with them.

Approach

I’m interested in process and materiality in printmaking, I’ve previously worked in letterpress, but returned to screen printing in 2017. You can find me applying or adapting an image-making technique, and then discovering ways to undermine, abuse, and subvert it. I love a happy accident, and the hands-on nature of manual screenprinting means that accidents are all too common. I’m disinterested in rigorous adherence to consistency in a world of perfect reproduction. Which is convenient. ?

Process

I screenprint everything personally – which makes for a bit more variability than a master printer would produce, but I come from a background where everything I created has been precisely identical, so the human charm of the unique holds much more appeal. That said, plenty of rejects never see the light of day. I tend to produce very small editions, and move on to something new. I’m particularly drawn to special finishes – gilding, bronzing, pigment and diamond dusting. I’m also interested in combining processes and crafts that generally don’t get to hang out together. Typically my work involves a computer somewhere along the line, and then that gets dragged over some old-school manual coals.

Is it art?

I make images. I’m usually guided more by formal and emotive considerations than narrative ones, in creating pieces. They’re obviously works of art, but I’m far more comfortable wearing the printmaker, or image-maker cap than the artist’s one. I employ the skills of a visual designer, and consider what I’m doing more of an extension of that, than something I’d understand as Fine Art. But none of that really matters, if the work speaks to you.

19 Emmet Street
Dublin 1
Ireland
+353 1 855 1053
alastair@hexhibit.com
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