The Water's Edge

Curatorial note from the permanent exhibition of The Water's Edge at The British Library, London

In these eleven silkscreen prints Ardyn Halter parallels his own visual expression of the experience of swimming, of being in the water with the poems of some of the leading contemporary poets - Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Michael Longley, Geoffrey Hill, Don Paterson; Jamie McKendrick, Stephen Romer and Gabriel Levin.

The prints do not illustrate individual poems but rather relate to what Ardyn Halter has called the common theme of water as a primary element in the emotional and the psychological consciousness of the writer.”

A conscious effort was made to restrict the number of colours in each print to a minimum, to preserve the primary range of colour: “when we think about, view, are in, reflect on, relate to the sea and living water we are affected in a primary way. One touches on emotions, deep as one's earliest memories.”

Whereas in his earlier work, Ardyn Halter made prints in up to 35 colours, here the number of colours per print ranges from four to nine. Moreover, each print shares at least one and sometimes more than one screen in common with another, lending a further sense of unity to the series.