Interview | Chris Roantree and Akarsh Kummattummal
We had the pleasure of interviewing Chris Roantree and Akarsh Kummattummal, who were awarded the Woolwich Contemporary Printmaking Prize 2021. Their new work is showcased as part of this year’s Fair. The work is a collaboration between the artists. Chris and Akarsh are both fascinated by narratives of the past and the relationship between the artists’ two cultures.
Chris Roantree graduated from the Royal College in 2002, where he specialised in etching. Since then he has won numerous awards and teaches etching at the renowned City & Guilds of London Art School print room. He has exhibited internationally and undertaken residencies in Paris and Central America where his sculptural work resides in a Land art park on the boarder of Guatemala.
Akarsh Kummattummal is a successful artist whose career has spanned advertising and concept art, and is currently working as an Art Director for ground breaking video games company.
We’re delighted that you will be exhibiting with us again this year as part of Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair 2022. Do you want to start by introducing yourselves?
CR: I’m an artist and I teach etching at the City & Guilds of London Art School. Norman Ackroyd introduced me to the print room about 17 years ago. I was then asked to work alongside Jason Hicklin teaching traditional etching. It’s a 600 year old process and we’re teaching in that line of history. We try to do the same methods that Rembrandt and Goya were using. My practice is also guided by those traditions.
AK: I'm originally from Kerala, South of India. I started off with traditional painting and drawing but moved into more digital ways of working. I now work as an art director in games and films. We became friends many years ago, we’re like family and then we decided to start working together.
CR: Akarsh saw what I was doing work-wise, which was mostly in etching and we both share this interest in traditional, academic marks, values and tone. We then embarked on creating a body of work together, which we’re still hoping to expand. It became about getting a body of work together that has some form of narrative. It's been really fascinating developing from one image that we created together to then ten pieces of work for the Fair. It’s a very new thing, this collaboration.
KARKINOS, 2020
You were awarded the Woolwich Contemporary Printmaking Prize 2021 for your artwork ‘Karkinos’, can you tell me a bit more about this work?
CR: I love narrative and stories, but also you also can't escape what’s going on politically and environmentally. One piece of work we have is called ‘Rewilding’, which is a little island with a woman stood on top of it. This is included in the Fair. We started to explore these dramatic landscapes. For Karkinos, we came up with this composition of a giant crab jumping out of the water. It stems back to times when people were creating epic and dramatic narratives. I suppose it’s a form of message in a way. This idea of rewilding, which is what the first piece and more in the Fair are called, are essentially about bringing extinct species back into habitats to rewild them again.
We're also looking at the idea of a human psychological rewilding as well. The images are meant to be beautiful, epic and almost cinematic. But they are also a warning at the same time. Intaglio printmaking and using oil-based ink, running it through a press is a really nice way to create these dramas. When we get the work on the etching plates and on the paper, it really does something else.
AK: We have tried to create a sense of movement to transport people into a different space, like when you watch a film. It’s been a process. Early on, like Chris mentioned, rewilding was quite successful but it's evolving through the narrative and mark making. Karkinos was a turning point for us and we’re now adding elements that you normally wouldn’t see in traditional etching.
CR: The work is becoming a lot more fluid in the making and we’re trying to push the boundaries of what the intaglio print process can do. Our work was quite tight at one point, and I think we’ve been trying to loosen up. It's challenging working together to try and keep that fresh, loose approach.
Rewilding, 2021, Etching, 24 × 34 cm, Edition of 160
Can you talk me through your collaboration and how you work together as part of the printmaking process?
CR: We’ve been sharing a studio for a while and I got Akarsh into the print room. I was just rolling out metal plates with black ink and he just totally took to it. We’ve been working into these surfaces, printing monotypes over and over again to try and get a sense of an imagined environment or habitat, where we might be able to locate some of the other works and drawings. Akarsh is also a very close friend, like family. So we've discussed work but I think just getting into a workshop, into a traditional etching room was important, seeing how his own practice and his work influences this process as well.
AK: It's a mix of two different works. It's like Chris said, if it's thumbnail processing at an early sketch stage, this could just be Chris and I separately scribbling but then we combine the works. We talk about it and then break it down compositionally, choosing what we need to focus on and then develop from there. This back and forth starts at an early stage. I think it's quite easy at the early stage because we both have an idea and then work towards it. It's at the end when we both have to really filter down. Chris has been teaching and breaking down composition for years and in my profession that’s also what I do. We’re looking at how things work, the flow of it, and what doesn't work. So, we are quite critical of what we want and what we don't want but because of our experience it’s easy to agree upon this.
CR: We've been scaling up this work for Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair, compared to some of the previous work. Both of us are trying to see how far we can actually push this process and how ambitious we can get.
High Black Water, 2022, Etching, 66 × 57 cm, Edition of 70
What draws you to intaglio as a method in printmaking?
CR: I was brought into a print room during my fine art degree and it just made total sense to me. I was making academic paintings but what was happening in my sketchbooks was not happening on the canvas. When I was inducted into the print room when I was around 19, everything that I could make in my sketchbook seemed to be able to somehow work together on the plate. I was putting bits of photo etching, drawing, using different grounds to make these odd visual montages. It’s something about the sequence of events leading up to the plate - the image doesn’t exist until you pull it off the press and it's there for the first time. I think for most etchers and printmakers, it’s about the reveal. The elemental etching process is something that I've always fallen in love with, and ever since then I was hooked.
I went to the Royal College of Art and did my masters degree there. I then met Norman Ackroyd, who introduced me to Jason Hicklin, who I've learned so much from in terms of just what you can do with a piece of metal, a bath of acid and some wax. I'm still in love with the process now. I've spent more time in my life in that one particular print room than any other place I've ever lived. It's a very special place and the process is ingrained in me.
AK: I was born in Kerala and I always wanted to get into my interests, which were in traditional paintings and drawings. So that's where it all started for me but by a certain age you realise growing up there that there are no opportunities. I came across Windows MS Paint and went into the world of digital. But one thing I kept consistently doing throughout my life is drawing and painting.
CR: Sometimes when I go to Akarsh’s place, I just walk past a little side table and there's a watercolour painting. You walk in the room and your eye jumps instantly to this painting. He talks about them as a sketch, but these are seriously academic, amazing watercolours. These are really special objects. I think both of us just have this real love of good academic drawing. I think it's hard to get that into the work but keep the drama and flow from the initial thumbnail drawings.
AK: The black and white print is simplified but very impactful, which is something I’ve really enjoyed about the etching works. Also, for us, it's always about inspiration. When we meet up to do work, say for 4 hours, for 2 of those hours we’re speaking about interesting ideas back and forth. I think one main thing of the collaboration is that it helps us balance and get work done.
CR: I think collaboration is important and very necessary to just be able to make work. Our communities are very important. I think Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair is an amazing place and historically print has always been a medium to speak through. Not everyone can afford oil paintings or has the space, particularly young collectors. I think WCPF and printmaking in general, there are interesting things happening - people are taking more risks to collaborate.
Installation shot from WCPF22 by Lucy J. Toms
The landscapes that you situate figures and animals within feel at once familiar, like a memory or distant past, and at the same time fictional. Can you expand on this relationship between the familiar and unfamiliar through technique and subject matter?
CR: We’re interested in narrative and cinema. I was brought up in a very industrial northern steel-working town. You cross the border and everything just goes black and white. It’s quite a dystopian-looking place, there's smoke everywhere at night, the blast furnaces open up and fill the sky with drama and fire, literally. It's difficult not to somehow draw from that. I was also brought up when disaster movies were cycling through the cinema. It feels like it’s on our doorstep now, it’s in the news and no longer a fiction. I think the familiar in the work is actually supposed to be a bit scary and dramatic. At the same time, we’re making beautiful images to make somebody want to inhabit these spaces, to feel safe. That's generally the aspect of rewilding, putting wolves into a landscape, which are apex predators. As a result, they completely change the landscape. There is a trophic cascade all the way down from the insects in the water to the top of the trees. They help to evolve and support.
AK: There is a fear within that keeps us alive. We don’t psychologically tap into that fear often. We’re fascinated by strange places, like dreams. We’re trying to create a familiar place, which is unfamiliar in a way, it’s a déja vu effect. We’re evoking this feeling. The technique is quite varied and it changes per image sometimes, through drawing and mark making. We mix techniques because we don’t want to create a formula and want to keep the images fluid. There are photographic, sketch, 3D and cut out techniques, combining a traditional and ancient evolution of technique with modern methods.
It really helps when me and Chris do this together collaboratively. There's two sets of eyes and brains involved and it’s a lot of push and pull. This is a great aspect of working together. I’d never done etching or used print before but because of Chris, I'm getting into the process. The same way Chris was never into digital drawing. Technique and skill-wise, we’re teaching each other and expanding our process.
Rewilding II, 2022, Etching, 35 × 66 cm, Edition of 80
You’ve spoken about the influence of cinema and within your prints, there is a sense of foreboding, like something is about to happen that we, the viewer, are a witness TO AND on the edge of an event. Can you talk more about this and its relationship to landscape?
CR: What you read day-to-day, politically and environmentally, it's hard to escape as these disasters are playing out around us. As artists, we’re asking what our role is and what the work is about. We’re evoking this sense of danger within these beautiful, cinematic landscapes. In the new works, there are relics and statues set in the mud or snow. It’s perhaps a nod to a potential future or pastime. Often the habitats are isolated, small islands are floating by themselves. The last vestiges of something we can repair or save. Often there are also dogs and wolves passing through the landscapes, allowing us to walk with them. They’re taking us on a journey through this place.
AK: Each image is left for viewers to feel what they want to feel. We've also tried to use cinematic techniques. We’re so used to seeing things within the frame and we’re experimenting with depth of field, which you can start to see in the first Karkinos. It's as if someone has gone to a world, captured this photograph or still but it’s actually a print. We’re playing with cinematic illusion.
Rewilding III, 2022, Etching, 35 × 78 cm, Edition of 80
As part of this prize, you’re exhibiting new work with us at this year’s Fair. Can you talk to us about the new series of prints and how this came about through your collaboration?
CR: We’re working on a kind of triptych. They are three separate images, which depict a seascape with a giant eroding statue floating above it at night. It’s enveloped in ink and monotype-marks. The three images work separately and together. Then we’ve also created two panoramic Rewilding images which follow the dogs on this walk. And we've got a couple of other images of dogs presented in these odd environments, one has this giant shard coming out of the sky and its just touching the dog’s nose. It’s sniffing an object that we don't really know what it is.
AK: This particular image raises questions: is the object threatening, has it come from somewhere else? Each viewer can answer it in their own way and is based on who's seeing it. There is an immersive feel within these worlds and images.
Apex Step, 2022, Etching, 37 × 27 cm, Edition of 80
And finally, can you tell me your artistic inspirations and how they have influenced your collaborative work?
CR: I was trained to learn how to paint, looking at and studying palettes of Lucian Freud and Jenny Saville who were creating these really wonderful depictions of skin and flesh. Through this, you learn to utilise oil paint. But as I said, when I went into the print room, it just seemed to make sense of what was happening in those sketchbooks. I was also brought up on early seventies fantasy, like Frank Frazetta, things you see on seventies prog-rock album covers, academically it was gorgeous, beautifully painted and drawn. I then went to art school to be classically trained and looked at Rembrandt, Goya and Picasso. But often, I was going to a local comic shop to buy these works by people who could actually draw. Going back to early childhood, inspiration came from comic books, looking at cinema, and drawing.
AK: You have to put in the hours and hours of drawing before you can really make something. It’s a practice that's been dying off lately. It’s something I see in my profession, you need to know and practice the rules of drawing. If you have a passion for it, you need to put in the work to be able to break things down. Even though I work in a different medium, understanding drawing has really helped in my line of work. Influences and inspirations are what make you want to put in the hours.
CR: Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair is a great place to see and explore the work of artists who are really putting in those hours. But print can also speak to many different demographics, giving people a way into fine art.
