Ann Desmet's work is concerned with the constant development and preservation of the built environment. Using print, collage and drawing she layers and mutates architectural forms, exploring the nature of change, stasis and the revelatory qualities of excavation. Desmet spent a year in Italy as a Rome Scholar in Printmaking and was struck by the weight of the city’s history and the intense visual impact of its architecture. Through collage and the repetition of relief-printed images she seeks to represent the visual and temporal dizziness and disorientation of the urban environment. In Urban Evolution, for example architectural elements are collaged on to razor shells alluding to the geological submarine past of a city and alluding to a possible submerged future. David Morris, Head of Collections at the Whitworth Art Gallery notes that Desmet's work presents a 'multiple transformation of nature, culture and cycles of time'.
Work by Anne Desmet.
Work by Anne Desmet.
'Urban Evolution' is a collaboration between the Hart Gallery, London and The Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester.
