Please also see CHANGING CHANNELS I-III on the Prints page.

Trans(action) - Excelsior Works, Bermondsey, London, 2012
Exhibited at the Pie Factory in Margate, 2012

The process of creating the two panels in 'Trans(action)' was similar to 'Burning' (2011), in that the metal panels were first screenprinted with transparent varnish and then etched with a corrosive substance, making the images visible.

The images used in the 'Trans(action)' series were different, however. I photographed what remained of Margate's then-disused rollercoaster, the oldest in Britain, destroyed by fire some years earlier. During the action, it gradually appears as a rusted burnt-out image, its form then gaining more structure over time against the shining metal. Appearing from nothing, it hangs in the air, its history compressed in a brief chemical reaction.

Brian D Hodgson, 2018

Burning - Excelsior Works, Bermondsey, London, June 2011
Screened at 'Places Called', Portobello Pop-up Cinema, 2011
Exhibited in and won Pushing Print Prize 2011

'Burning' used a number of photographs I took around the Westway in west London, with a view to showing the work at the Portobello Pop-up Cinema.

I screenprinted three metal plates with the photographic urban images in transparent varnish, so that the plates appeared to be blank. The varnish stencil was designed to work as an etch resist.

I threw at the plates a mordant known to be very reactive with the metal.

The power of the etching process and the destructive action, form the image in front of the viewer. It is an image quite literally of a decaying and burning urban landscape.

The urban imagery used was intended to appear during the action at the same time as being broken down and destroyed. I was particularly interested in the convergence of the real-time chemical reaction and the emerging image, which can be seen in the video.

Brian D Hodgson, 2018

Attack - Area 10, Peckham, London, 6 April 2003
Shown in Hayward Gallery Talk Space in October 2006

The action 'Attack' took place in front of an audience on the weekend that America and Britain invaded Iraq in 2003. It became a kind of response to both my own and the collective fear and paranoia pervading the public consciousness at the time. It was an attempt to process and exorcise my own fear, by creating in art form the imagined action of a suicide bomber on the London Underground and other public places in London. I had spent previous weeks taking photographs in these places, imagining the time and place that I pushed the camera shutter button to be the point of detonation. These photos were then screenprinted on sheet metal and displayed in Area 10 prior to the action.

I took the pieces down from the wall and 'attacked' them with a mordant known to be very reactive with the metal. The images were gradually bitten and dissolved over about 20 minutes, like an explosion in slow motion, and re-displayed afterwards - the partially-destroyed artefacts bearing images of moments of detonation and bombed-out scenes.

Brian D Hodgson, 2018