Julie Roch-Cuerrier

It all started with a book: a 1981 National Geographic atlas that belonged to my family. Over the last two years, I developed a research project around it. I sanded off the surface of maps in the atlas to create ink made out of the collected pigments, using the process of erasure to look back at a history and a tradition of printmaking. The atlas is now a physical deconstruction of a printed object. The erased maps of the atlas ended up as a verification of the opaque surface of the paper behind the printed page. The whole project questions the vulnerability of the printed image; the atlas works as a metaphor addressing historical and philosophical questions.

Art is for me a way to respond to my environment, and address our sense of being in the world, whether that is physically or conceptually. I’m interested in the way history and culture is written, and in how ideas and techniques migrate. In developing new works, I am looking for ways to seek the very essence of things, to distil ideas to analyse the way we perceive them. Through my work I aim to introduce a different order of experience. Every new piece is a different proposition of the original atlas, each time represented in a further object or idea to express what I have found.