Practical Dialogue was a collaborative project led by Sue Baker Kenton, Artist in Residence at Leicester Print Workshop. Three collaborative partnerships between six artists were formed creating two-way dialogues. The aim was the start of conversations between the artists and to produce work influenced by the printing process.

The partnerships were Sue Baker Kenton + Gino Ballantyne, Serena Smith + Richard Devereux, Peter Clayton + Gordon Millar.

Practical Dialogues

Gino created print, sculpture, word art and installation for his Practical Dialogue collaboration. Practical Dialogues was helpful in that Gino had access to a fully equipped printing studio where he could experiment with different print processes most of which he had used previously. Etching, spit bite, stone lithography and drypoint were the techniques he investigated. This enabled him to understand the potential use for each process in installation, sculpture, word drawings and transactional online work. 

Sue Baker Kenton introduced Gino to the technique of spit bite and Gino discovered a way of working that he hadn’t considered before. Gino's main priority was to independently use the process and materials of each. 

Gino had previously used digital printing technologies but for him – like the emperor’s new clothes – they became predictable, meaningless and persistently lacking in surface dynamics that could evolve intelligently. 

Gino felt printmaking was the perfect vehicle for a postmodern Western-centric art world, in which visual culture was influenced by photographic media, reproduction and altered reality. The philosopher Jean Baudrillard would describe this world as ‘Simulacra’ where all things worthy of recognition as contemporary art are heavily referenced and commodified. 

What better way to challenge the simulacra of contemporary art than use a method of duplication, which is complicit in Baudrillard’s world - referenced and commodified duplication. Prints, independently orientated, echoing Who? What? Why? 

For the contemporary artist entertainment, sensation, decoration and visual spectacle are standards. Human vulnerability to technology and its inevitable conditioning is easier when entertainment eases and sanitises the human consciousness, particularly in an increasingly insular art world. A world of interiors rather than exteriors. 

"Doubt" by Gino is a limited edition lithograph, editioned by Sue Baker-Kenton, at the Leicester Print Workshop.

For Practical dialogues each artist made a final print edition of 15.  Gino chose to use stone lithographiy for his print edition. He chose Stone Lithography because it was a process that responded directly to the drawing process.

Other Selected Prints made during Practical Dialogues

Gino was very familiar with different printing methods and having the freedom to use a fully equipped print studio was an enormous bonus.

Below are a few examples of other prints he made during Practical Dialogues at Leicester print studios.