Mode 2: Bremen Couple

« Straight outta Lockdown / The Freedom Prints » is a series of Mode 2 vintage prints (from the mid 2000s to the early 2010s), hand-painted or hand-sprayed in 2020 and 2021, and re-numbered in very limited runs.

"Bremen Couple" is part of the third wave of Mode 2 print re-releases. It's being published together with "Armchair" and our new screen print, "Touch & Feel Some More".

"Also know as "That First Touch", this was originally a three-colour and hand-painted silk-screen print from Lazarides, in November 2010. I recently further embellished them with spray-paint, as an edition of 34 from 40.

Back in early 2009, I was invited to take part in a group-show called “Urban Art”, at the Weserburg Museum in Bremen; and I had been given quite a large wall to fill. I didn't have that much money to go and splash out on making new paintings with linen stretched over frames, so I went for another approach.

This was all going to be done on salvaged cardboard boxes, using only black charcoal for the sketches, white and black acrylic paint, then matt acrylic binder; making the most from limited resources, and going to the essential...

I chose to tell the story of the meeting of two young lovers and the alchemy that would evolve between them as time went by.

There is something quite special about that first time when two people become intimate, and their wandering hands discover each others' bodies; or lips and hair touch skin, while one can even smell the other's intimacy...

Maybe it is that first touch that may drive some of us to pine for new partners, reenacting this discovery of a new other, over and over; which is part of the narrative behind this whole installation.

All the ideas went down into one of my older little pocket sketchbooks, and this particular one was picked out by Steve Lazarides to be made as a print, after having moved to the Rathbone Street gallery. The printer at that time was a girl called Sarah, who did screen-printing with as little chemicals as possible.

She moved to Australia or something, and the changes had repercussions on the webshop as well; so some series were put on the backburners in the reorganisation.

o here is one of them again, straight from the archives, with a new lease of life." Mode 2
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Mode 2

"Bremen Couple" (aka "That First Touch")

3-colour hand-embellished screen print on Somerset 280 g/sm

Originally printed in 2010 by Lazarides

Hand-sprayed with 3 spray colours in 2021

56 x 76 cm

4 deckle edges

Edition of 34

Signed

Unique works by Mode 2 are also available on the page dedicated to him in the gallery section.