Emma Molony
Emma Molony is an artist-designer and printmaker based in Beer, East Devon. She is part of Double Elephant Print Workshop and works with many different organisations and projects, as well as producing her own range of wallpaper…
What do you do?
I’m an artist designer – I make wallpaper, prints (screenprint, monotype, etching, linocut) and I also create site-specific installations in places that explore their history/stories.
I work with lots of different organisations – I could be delivering workshops in schools, hospitals, prisons or galleries or creating a site-specific installation for an historic house, or making my own prints for a gallery or solo show.
How did you get started?
I learned to print about 20 years ago while living in Venice, which is full of old etching studios. When I moved back to Devon a few years later, I joined Double Elephant and have never stopped.
I ended up making wallpaper because I love the way repeat patterns transform a piece of work. I was lucky because at the time (2009) Kirstie Allsopp was looking for a Devon wallpaper-maker for her Homemade Home series. So after screenprinting a design for her, I then launched my own wallpaper.
Who do you work with and why?
I really enjoy working with the heritage sector (archives, historic houses, museums), taking inspiration from the stories, with nature conservation organisations (East Devon and Blackdown Hills AONBs) and also with contemporary art (eg printmaking workshops at Hauser & Wirth Somerset).
I think that as a printmaker facilitator, I’m simply enabling more people to get excited by printmaking. The possibilities are endless and there will always be a print process for everyone. So really, I feel like a technician when I’m printing with participants – which is how it should be.
What keeps you going when things get tough?
The people! I absolutely love the different people my projects enable me to work with – artists, writers, academics, experts in different fields, participants and arts organisations. That sounds so vague, but for me, projects are only exciting when you feel like you’re part of a bigger entity. I really need this interaction.
Name one thing that would make your life easier as an artist or arts organiser.
More provision for rural artists and creative practitioners. If you don’t have a studio at home (I don’t), it’s really hard to find communal or affordable spaces. I’m most productive in summer, when I can work outside in my garden with my press, inks and the washing line to hang prints.
Tell us what a typical month looks like?
I don’t really have a typical month or event. In December, I was completely absorbed in researching, experimenting and filming daily print-at-home with found materials clips for #24DaysOfPrint with Double Elephant. Right now, I’m immersed in the world of Victorian plant-hunters and the incredible collections at the Devon & Exeter Institution (DEI).
What does the next year look like for you?
The Trade & Exchange commission I’m currently working on is an ambitious piece bringing together research, printmaking, lasercutting and working within the limitations/possibilities of an empty shop window!
I’m also keen to explore outdoor printing possibilities. This summer I’ll be working with East Devon AONB and Fab Lab Devon to find ways to combine printmaking and 3D printing using nature (like butterfly eggs) as inspiration.
Tell us about your approach to the Trade & Exchange commission.
My starting point was a Veitch plant catalogue at the DEI. A dynasty of hugely influential horticulturalists, the Veitch Exeter nursery was one of the largest in Europe.
For me, the story of the West’s quest for ‘horticultural gold’ from the East explodes with themes – gender, class, profiteering, colonial frontiers and, in particular, the division of natural history into professional and amateur domains which consigned women to marginal amateur roles.
I’ve focussed on two visual aspects of this era. The first is the paintings of Marianne North, who, as a privileged woman, found a way to overcome conventional barriers and prolifically painted plants in their natural habitats. She forged a genre somewhere between botanical illustrations and traditional landscape painting.
The second area I’m exploring is how this age of Victorian plant-hunters was reflected in scenic wallpaper. The 1840s mark an intriguing shift in wallpaper design. There’s an increasingly atavistic visualisation of nature and large uninhabited landscape panels form a new phase of interior decoration that brings an exotic new world into the home. [Read more about the commission here]
What’s been the best moment for you or your group in the last year?
I loved the Riddle 57 project that I created with Double Elephant and more than 200 participants last year during lockdown. We worked with poet Jacob Polley, medievalists Prof Chris Andrews and Dr Megan Cavell to create an interactive digital riddle from The Exeter Book. Luke and Corina Hagan were incredible at combining all the public illustration submissions to form an interactive ‘playable’ riddle. https://www.doubleelephant.org.uk/riddle-57
In what ways are you helping to put Exeter on the cultural map, nationally or internationally?
Riddle 57 is now being used in universities across the world to teach Anglo Saxon literature and explore the 1,000-year-old-riddles of The Exeter Book.
There aren’t lots of small-scale wallpaper designers nationally. My work has been used in film, theatre, tv and is sold globally from stockists and my website.
I also think that the work Double Elephant is doing is hugely significant nationally – as a community printmaking studio and its emerging role in social prescribing.
What have you been doing during lockdown?
It’s actually been really hard to carve out time for my practice. As a self-employed single parent, home-schooling during the lockdowns, juggling jobs, I’ve found the only time for my creative work is at the weekend and evenings.
However, yes – I have enjoyed finding exciting new ways to work, like the possibilities of printing without a press and with found materials (electrical tape, screenprinting using tights).
I also managed a Royal Drawing School online course in Experimental Print, which was great. I’d never have been able to afford to attend this in London.
How do we find out more?
Insta: emmamolonyprintmaker
Websites: www.emmamolony.com | www.doubleelephant.org.uk