Alcea, 2019

In Alcea, artist Lucy Whitford experiments with layering and inversion. A drawing of hollyhocks is printed over its own negative, producing a dense, interwoven mass of organic form. The overlay disrupts clarity, allowing the image to oscillate between botanical reference and abstraction.

This strategy of doubling reflects Whitford’s sculptural approach, where materials are layered, braced or set against one another to test their structural and symbolic limits. The resulting composition feels both fluid and deliberate — intuitive in gesture yet carefully constructed.

Alcea translates Lucy Whitford’s interest in fragility, accumulation and material tension into a concentrated graphic form.

In risograph printing, each colour is printed as a separate pass through a risograph machine — a stencil-based duplicator that presses organic soy inks into the paper. Risograph inks are naturally vibrant — they are renowned for their vivid colours and evident textures. The inks are transparent so layers build to create more colours. Slight shifts in registration and a soft grain make every impression subtly unique.

Alcea is printed on Olin natural white 170gsm, an uncoated, FSC-certified stock whose gentle warmth lets the colours glow. The edition is strictly limited to 100 and will never be reprinted. All prints were produced at the London Centre for Book Arts.