Drunk Complexions

This beautifully printed and wholly unique artist book expands upon London-based artist Samara Scott’s installation practice, translating her approach to materiality—with her use of dense surface language and atmospheric liquids, objects and textures—onto the shimmering, glossy page.

Beginning with a series of works made for the exhibition Harvest (2015) at London’s The Sunday Painter, Drunk Complexions depicts a chronological portrait of these works—condensed sub astral landscapes and rock pools housed in domestic vessels, as they form, ripen, decay, crust over and disintegrate. Reproduced in neon pink and orange, the colors of a ‘medieval Miami sunset,’ the magnified single-color images create new microscopic environments.

An additional synthetic substance intermingles with those that the images depict. A deletion chemical applied, with a variety of materials, directly onto lithographic printing plates produces an inky film of silver that pools and swarms across the pages, submerging the images and mirroring the shifting liquids that immerse the consumer detritus and material landscapes of the original works.

Designed by Traven T. Croves

Edited by Alice Lindsay, Andrew Lister, Matthew Stuart and Peter Willis