Leeds College of Art   2008/2009

Rebecca Strain

Whilst at the college I wanted to develop the rejections that the public had submitted at the show last time. For months I had been pouring them through my mind, writing them out rewriting them, printing then in colour, taking some words and highlighting these, but it all seemed to be a waste of time because the material I was working with was much more precious that anything I could do to it. So I left it as it was and scanned the rejections which you can see online here.

I had been speaking with some of my peers at an artist crit session at Project Space Leeds and we talked about making the whole rejection theme a lot more light hearted. I selected some of the statements from the rejections and used these as well as some prints I had made before to create the final images. I sought advise from the technicians and they suggested a CMYK separation. I made 10 editions of each image and when I had finished I selected the best, based on a criteria of well executed, bright, clear, not marked and central on the page. It was a coincidence that I happen to have had 36 rejections submitted last July and now I had 36 rejected images so I have named each of these after a rejection.

On 16th April 2009 I held an event as part of the preview for the show of mine and the other three artists work. The public were invited to select the worst print using a red dot as a markers. A stunningly appropriate performance was provided by Scott Senogles and Rus Pearson.