Kip Gresham, founder and director of The Print Studio, in Cambridge, recently decided to try something quite unique, using his own living quarters as the setting for an exhibition displaying an array of vibrant prints. Stepping into the result, Prints: In Situ, Willard Boepple’s striking blue print is the first thing that catches the eye – it stands proudly in the corridor of Gresham’s nineteenth-century Cambridge home.  

The creative process behind this piece is uncanny. Playing the no man’s land between sculpture and drawing, Boepple has  created a visual print which appears to bend in more than three dimensions, a visual which is a physical impossibility when put into architectural and structural form. Created using a layering process, each print has an intriguing saturation and subtlety, despite presenting overwhelmingly bold visuals at the first glance.

Boepple is just one of many intriguing artists exhibited at Gresham’s house this weekend. For most of the artists with work on display, print makes up just a minor part of their much wider practice, acting as a medium through which to explore broader ideas, like dimensionality and structure in the case of Boepple, who is primarily a sculptor.

While lovely to notice, these intricacies are not the forces making Kip’s exhibition so unique. Rather, it’s the very setting of the exhibition itself. This is first public exhibition held by the Print Studio using the home as a venue. The central idea is that by displaying pieces in a more normal setting, one is able to better comprehend their scale. In a studio, larger pieces in particular can often come across as detached and sterile, and this is sometimes even more the case when a customer views them online. According to Kip Gresham, "In a gallery you simply don’t get a sense of scale or power, nor the intimacy and electrical charge of a piece. It’s just seen as this remote thing."

The artist is right. When Stephen Chambers’ exploding shed is placed alongside a houseplant, for example, it becomes something totally different. Suddenly the piece makes sense, becoming a work of art we could all place on our living room wall. Likewise, Humphrey Ocean has a print of a red chair on display above Kip’s living room wooden drawers. While the piece might have looked slightly displaced in a clinical gallery, in the home a piece inspired by the domestic suddenly comes to life.

Although one might think that the clutter and background visuals of a lived-in home would deflect from the pieces on display, in reality it’s the opposite. Michael Brick’s blocky print really feels as though its correctly positioned when placed within the walls of Kip Gresham’s front living room. With a lamp on either side and a white cabinet below stacked with CDs, books and a few pens, it feels as though it’s always belonged just there. It’s almost as though the artist had that very spot in mind when he began to intriguingly weight a large black square upon a weaker red one.

...you could visit this exhibition just to appreciate the interesting curatorial work that’s gone into using the domestic as a serious exhibition space.

Indeed, you could visit this exhibition just to appreciate the interesting curatorial work that’s gone into using the domestic as a serious exhibition space, though each piece is carefully selected in its own right. Among the collection is a piece by much-admired late Scotsman John McLean, as well as a striking print by Tim Gresham, who may well be the future of street art. Nick Kennedy’s pieces resemble a complex mechanical spiral graph: with sixty dots on the piece representing a second each, it seems he has actually managed to print time. On the other side of the room, Kip Gresham’s own print Vincent’s Dream looms large, channelling the inner mental state of Van Gogh at his period of greatest torment.

The observation that quite contrasting pieces are displayed alongside one another repeats itself. Willard Boepple’s structural approach is laid bare next to Nick Kennedy’s mechanical methods, but both are worlds apart from Humphrey Ocean’s uncertain shoe-car illusion. With around forty pieces on display, there’s an eclectic mix of work from artists of all ages and backgrounds, many of whom travel long distances specifically to collaborate with Kip Gresham at his studio in Toft.

Prints: In Situ is a true delight to attend, both for art collectors and admirers alike, so take advantage of the short time frame in which you can see these pieces in their current domestic context.

PRINTS: IN SITU is available to view at Kip Gresham’s home from 10am – 6pm on 14th September and 11am – 5pm on 15th September. To visit, contact Katherine Oliver at katherine@oliverprojects.com.

You can still get in contact after the official exhibition dates to arrange an appointment at info@theprintstudio.co.uk.