A Game of Hunters and Hunted (Book)
Nothing was more enjoyable for me as a child than the dizzying excitement of hiding in the dark as part of some summer night game. Due to a safe upbringing, I had the freedom to associate the action of hiding with play and stories. It was a thing done with friends, or part of fairytales in which children eluded monsters and stepmothers. It was not necessity in my daily life and there was no true threat attached.
This artist book aims to capture elements of naive play while acknowledging the darker origins of these games – the relationship between the hunter, and the hunted. In it, a wolf pack tracks the subject through remembered landscapes, yet she seeks solace in trees and cozy dens hidden in the bush. The work plays with the tension of childhood memories filtered through the experience of adulthood.
A Game of Hunters and Hunted is created using one illustrative etching which has been collaged and recombined using monoprinting and drypoint etching. The form of the pop-up book pushes printmaking beyond its traditional boundaries of two-dimensional editions, while referring to childhood. Growing up, I always wished to shrink myself down and walk through the playing card tunnels and fairy castles of Robert Sabuda’s pop-up books. These objects create a sense of depth that invites the viewer into the story (or in this case, the memory) to make it their own.
