Untitled (Iron Grid) engages the conceptual possibilities of pressure through relief print-making processes to investigate time and labour. Using frottage, an impression is taken from an ironing board forming a grid of intersecting diagonal lines. The grid is traced using a sewing machine to pierce the paper, blindly transferring the image to the front. The application of violent pressure is both irreversible and irreverent, visually dissolving the constructed borders. The emboss created by the sewing machine articulates a concern with texture, with attention paid to the surface of the print, the omission of colour disrupts ocular-centric readings in favour of the haptic. The print-making is conducted on the verso of the support allowing the chance of transfer to govern the outcome. The print’s braille-like quality requires a close encounter to give over visual control.

The work replicates in print, the warp and weft of fabric, used metaphorically to describe underlying foundational structures, as well as the dichotomies that exist in print-making and everyday life. These binaries operate in the pressure required in the act of ironing, of making a rubbing through topographical transfer, and of sewing, all of which create a flattened plane of homogenised space. The work’s central idea of time is explored in the processes employed: frottage is immediate, appearing like an apparition, while the sewing machine emboss, on the other hand, is mechanised, uniform, and removes subjective touch. Through repetition, the split between fast and slow that arises between these processes’ accounts for the desynchronisation of labour and time in contemporary life.