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REVIEW OF 'ENVOY; LIFE IS COMPLETELY INTERESTING'
BY EMMA HILL IN AUTUMN EDITION OF 'PRINTMAKING TODAY'
"Envoy; Life is completely Interesting is the fifth collaboration between Dale Devereux Barker RE
and American poet Paul Violi. Published in an edition of 300 , it ambitiously combines, in one volume, digitally generated imagery, commercially printed lithography, screenprints by the artist and endpapers unique to each copy. Envoy....took over a year to produce and involved two print studios (Healey's printers in Ipswich and the renowned Curwen Studio in Cambridge) to arrive at a quality work, reasonably priced.
Accessibility was paramount to Barker, who has made many books ranging from screenprint and linocut editions to elaborate monoprint and letterpress editions. Of this book's development, he was delighted that my first impression was of it's smell. Opening the hardbound covers (a facsimile of a Cuban cigar box) the scent of saturated ink hits one and the pages have a pleasant heaviness,
with a depth achieved by multi-layered printings. Envoy... has a free-ranging pictorial content, given coherence by Violi's long poem.
It is a book about inspiration, process, ephemera, mirroring in it's content the multiplicity of experience of which the poet speaks. The collaboration began quite simply, originating from found photographs Barker has collected over many years, a selection of which he sent to Violi for his responses.
The poem begins with a visual observation- an open book on a patio table, pages blowing back and forth in the wind. Violi sends the book, metaphorically, into the world to witness and record many moments that affirm; 'Life is completely interesting'. His writing combines a lyrical beauty with wry humour.
Barker's response in the images is elliptical, never simply illustrating, but building visual textures that support the references in the poem. Some pages have the signature rich colour and playfulness one associates with Barker's prints (a monkey's face printed in subtle silver against a scrolled background; tumbling 'cartoon' figures; or a tender image of a dog) but there is a darker undercurrent. A sequence of battered, faded- looking images of a Florida coastline, made digitally from the artist's father's old drinks' coasters bear the stains of vessels they have supported. The grid of scaffolding on a tenement block bleakly exposes the architectonic skeleton of the huge building. Meanwhile the poem's last lines are incorporated into a facsimile newspaper page showing x-ray images of illegal migrants entering the US in a lorry.
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