Ruairi Fallon has spent the last year creating his new body of work Scattered, Broken, Maybe from his spare bedroom studio in Ho Chi Minh City. A series of multi-layered relief prints exploring a move, a new positionality, an untethering from a previous perceptions of self, time difference induced isolation and a new set of self-imposed rules to break.

Relief printing is a process where a design is created on a raised surface, ink is applied to this raised surface and then pressure is used to transfer the ink from the block onto materials such as paper or fabric. This process has been used in Asia as early as 220AD to decorate, to record and to disseminate information. The invention of the Gutenberg Press in 1440 in Germany facilitated the first mass production of books such as the Mazarin Bible and Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches), spreading information/misinformation faster than ever; splitting the church and leading to the execution of tens of thousands of so called ‘witches’ across Europe.

Today, scrolling through social media until my eyes hurt and I can’t sleep makes these traditional processes seem glacial. Animals, ass and fighting, bombs and bicycles, more ass more war, more insufferable commentators. The lines are blurred with post truth all packaged up in tight 15 second clips. The non conclusive cliff hangers and dried up dopamine makes it harder to focus on one idea, on one image, on a singular project.

It’s calming to return to this once revolutionary process, to slow down and pick apart the layers, to funnel this whirling info landscape into my sketchbooks and find a sense of peace while doing so. Fractured moments of past present and future rattle through my head; I layer, combine, redact and overlap them into singular compositions.

Through the act of drawing I elongate the momentary thought, I stretch it out until I think it has enough potential to make it out of the sketchbook. I follow past instruction laid down in my tiny cursive:

“abstract texture, paste image over the top, isolate lips in yellow, blue white faded sunglasses, tree or explosion, distort teeth and bitter lemon, love letter, rioting is a cross community activity, homoerotic violence, bar coded CMYK edges, more realism, tubular bells, all roads lead to home, inside-outside, rothko-esk from a distance, a paradox– if I tell you I am a liar, am I a liar?”

Last six months on loop. See, think, sketch, draw, carve, print, and repeat. Over and over, slowing down my interactions with a singular idea and deepening my material understanding of the reduction process; working with or against the grain. The weight and feel of papers and the surfaces they offer when laid against the inked wooden blocks. How the surface tension dictates the pressure required to transfer any carved image from one matrix to the other. Different pigments and their reaction to each other, to temperature and to humidity on any given day, effecting texture and the opacity of each layer. These are the physical intricacies of the process before I consider the visual components such as mark making and colour theory. Colour and its interactions change with the clock, their physical location and with ones feelings on any given day. Two colours can look like one. One colour can look like two. What looks dull in one context may look bright in another. Reds can look cool-toned, and blues can be warm-toned. As Joseph Albers says,  

“In visual perception, a colour is almost never seen as it really is, as it physically is. This fact makes colour the most relative medium in art.”

These perceptions of colour make it difficult to imagine how a second layer of colour (of a print) will affect the first and even harder to predict what the third layer will do. This phenomenon is further effected by the surface area, opacity and scattered pattern of mark making on any given layer. These visual elements are the building blocks used to construct the Scattered, Broken, Maybe series that unfolds in different directions as you move through the gallery. Ruairi invites you to explore these carved wooden blocks and the printed works that he has extracted from them.