Keith Milow, PR6NT A - British Abstract Art

Keith Milow (British, b.1945)

Edition : /55
Number : Signed, dated and numbered 57/75 in coloured pencil, from the suite '15 23/55 55/46 66'
Date: 1969
Paper size (or piece size) : 51.4 x 76.9 cm
Condition : Very good
Provenance: ExxonMobil Art Collection (Sticker at back)

Milow commented that with the use of this photograph in prints 5 and 6 ‘I consciously begin playing the game of reproduction, but the subsequent destruction of the work altered that premise’.

Each of the rectangular photographic images is set in the same non-centralised position within its sheet. The broad right margin thus created was first intended by Milow to contain texts describing the activity within each print, and secondly to take his handwritten inscriptions, but was finally left blank. The compartmented ‘L’ shapes at all four corners are a parody of conventional printing registration marks, and are included as anti-spatial references, to stress each print's non-illusionistic character. Milow published the following statement on this suite in the catalogue of his prints exhibition at the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, in September–October 1971: ‘The three images employed were taken from photographs of my studio and work.

‘The basic premise was that in no way would the print medium employed imitate any pre-existent work in other media; therefore image reference was oblique in terms of artworks, though remaining figuratively clear.’

‘The prints for the most part consist of a field of colour and half tone screen, the image having been altered variously by hand then powdered metals were deployed at sometimes crucial, sometimes contrived incidents depicted.’

‘Often the colour was given as imitative of colour in metals and corrosion, and sometimes it was merely compensatory for colour already laid down.’