UK
Batchelor of Fine Arts (Hons) U.W.E (Bristol)
Trained Photographer in Film & Digital Photography Studios (UK) 1996 - 2005
Bev Hayes Photographic Studio  2005 - 2012
Member of Hot Bed Press, Salford, UK, 2021

Sweden
Printmaking Studio Practice since 2017
Member Ålgården Konstnärernas Verkstäder & Galleri, Borås 2020
Member Konstnärernas Kollektiv Verkstad KKV BGB  2020
Ansvarig för Koppargrafik ​ ( Delat ) Jan 2022
Print workshop manager KKV GBG Since Jan 2022
 

Creative Biography   

Bev is a British born Visual Artist, based in Sweden and working in the media of Visual Arts, Digital Photography and Analogue Printmaking from a studio in Gothenburg and where she lives in Kungälv. She has a Batchelor of Fine Arts from the England, (BFA Hons in Studio Arts and Printmaking) and since graduating has continued to work in art and education sectors, taking on gallery manager and director roles, also running her own photographic portrait studio before moving with her family to Sweden in 2012.

 

In 2020, she became an active member of the Grafiken Verkstad at Konstnärernas Kollektivverkstan in Göteborg and Ålgården Grafik Verkstad, Borås, two fully equipped, established Print Studios on the West Coast of Sweden. She Is a full time artist making collections of Photopolymer Gravures from a body of photographic images and forming collaborations with Gothenburg based and International Artists for exhibitions and film projects, selling work at art fairs locally and Internationally. Recently has gained representation and sold work at a printmaking gallery, Grafik I Väst  in Göteborg.  

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Studio Practice 

Printmaking and Photography joins together with experimentation in moving images as video or short film making. Within these media lies a curiosity about to all forms of mark making and how they translate as a tactile presence.

 

Making studies in drawing and painting to weave into her creative print process, the works are retold in a 2D and 3D aspect. Amalgamating the digital process into an analogue form. Printmaking methods she seeks to explore have low toxic impact, whilst having a keen interest in keep traditional print methods alive.  This chosen path forward is for health and environmental reasons.

 

Some photo works are made from discarded prints that over time allow for new layers of possibilities to come through. Sometimes themes can run parallel with one another. The aim is to creative fluid media that has no singular genre or trope pinned. This makes way for new cross overs and expression. They go on re morphing and repeating in pattern form always a common thread rooted in nature. Finding new ways of reusing and re working has  resourcefulness and the offset helps to minimise waste in the long term. 

    

Alongside her practice there is need for deeper research and field notes to contextualise an organic body of work. Reading around mans relationship with the natural world, how we respond and manage our sense of place and wellness within the changing environment comes into play during immersions in nature. She is open to looking and finding a way to protect what is around us and living so nature can thrive on, which is a larger collective concern we all hope to share. 

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“It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera… they are made with the eye, heart and head.”

– Henri Cartier-Bresson

 

Bev plays visually in camera with scenes of the sensory kind in micro and marco manner.  From treading carefully through forests, climbing coastal rocky crags to retracing routes in localities, they highlight the landmarks of our existence. Sounds and signals we once were in tune with are often are unnoticed, overshadowed and ignored. Therein lies a question about mans advancing of new technology --- if all our digital experiences and needs continually met at a press of a button - or intelligence of the artificial kind threatens to dull our reality, can we still connect and learn from nature at a pace in which we can sustain it ?  Can we hold on to real-time instincts for nature to remain present within us. 

 

Searching for a deeper interconnectedness. Referencing harmonies in nature and looking out for small deep wonders, and appreciating subtle changes in seasonal ebb and flow. This kind of engagement and reciprocity is something we all can share, and be the key to turning around a fateful futures. We may be more hopeful towards a Symbioscene existence. 

 

One visual representation of this is seen in the collaborative project made in 2020, titled HYPHAE, which stems back to a body of explorations on the subject of Land Art. 

 

Bev Hayes August 2023

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Print Background

BA Hons in Fine Art and Print.

Grounding knowledge in traditional printmaking was forged at Print Departments; University Of the West of England, Bristol, and along side the reputable, Centre for Fine Print Research. and John Moores University, Liverpool.

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Printmaking Tutor at The Bluecoat Arts Centre, Print Room, Liverpool 

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Photopolymer Intaglio courses at Konstnärernas Kollektivverkstad, Gothenburg 2021

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Ongoing print practice at print studios when travelling to UK.

 

Print subject matter now comes full circle, relating back to the titles of works made previously during her degree studies, `Translations I, II, II'   'A Poetry of Place'  and 'Leaving a place you are connected to ´.  

 

"Rekindling my print practice in the light of a new set of circumstances, seasonal impressions and the search for creative identity and synergy in the land I came to be. I record my tale of two cities, in ways that are both disparate yet embracing in its duality."  

 

Emblems of Land Art  :  

 

WEBLAND, UNDERLAND, HYPHAE, BOTANICAL and recent ELEMENTS OF THE LONG SEASON I - I V.  

 

'Elements of the long season VI, has just featured at an exhibition in Athens, 'Self Portrait ' in Etch Ink Art Space  - Athens Printmaking Center 3.3 - 8.4    

New - version 7 of 'Elements...of the long season` is being produced for 20:20 International Print Exchange 2023. 

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Interpreted Process

 

´What I set out to capture, with a tool of digital means, is in direct impulse and sensory response to experiences of light and shadow over contrasted forms. Catching these sensory instances in a micro and macro manner and sometimes more expansive scenes deal with the relationship between spacial and solitude of a figurative form, not always human, within that experience. Printmaking is the channel to amalgamate this imagery into being. A slowed down process from digital to analogue, with deconstructions and re constructions along the way.

This back and forth moves the work into a desired painterly print realm and plays with the chance, freedom and the constrained. Capturing these ambiguous narratives along side strong graphic forms are important elements in her work. At times, based in personal experience, other recordings represent existentially with the natural world, and impactful world we live in, our place in it and our instinct to sustain it.  

 

Bev Hayes 2020

 

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Studio Development

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Currently working in collaboration with fellow printmakers and as a member and workshop manager of Konstnärernas Kollektiv Verkstad  in Gothenburg and more recently connecting as a member of Ålgården Konstnärernas Verkstäder & Galleri, Borås and Hot Bed Press in Salford, Manchester. 

 

Sharing and exchanging print techniques through workshops and courses. 

 

Participating as a full time artist in Gothenburg and Sweden as part of group exhibitions. 

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PHOTOPOLYMER GRAVURE AT KKV GBG NOV 2023

Learn the basic process of photopolymer intaglio printing

www.kkvgbg.se  Gothenburg Collective Graphic Workshop

 

Contact if you wish to learn other methods in printmaking,

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Bev Hayes

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