Collaboration between Hilary Judd and Lucy May Schofield.

Perfect for handling sensitive material was created for ‘Posted/Unposted (British Isles)’, a collaborative project curated by Angie Butler & Imi Maufe. Inspired by [ Carriage return ], an ongoing postal exchange of typewriter drawings, our response to Posted/Unposted comprises of 5 letterpress printed signatures of 15 drawings forming an unbound pamphlet within a double-sided printed C5 envelope. Sometimes humourous, sometimes sensitive, but always personal, the book is composed of drawings based on a feeling, what was in front of us or what happening on a particular day.

Drawings and text: Bijou Model 5 Seidel & Naumann and Beaucourt Script typewriters. Printed: letterpress, photo polymer | Heidelberg platen press | GF Smith Colourplan 175gsm Natural, Handmade envelopes GF Smith Extract 130gsm Moon.

[ Carriage return ] is a postal exchange of typewriter drawings between the artists, corresponding with one another between the city of Manchester and the remote Northumbrian countryside, their drawings cross geographical and cultural boundaries. This act of exchange stretches time, elongating the space between their dialogue of intimate expressions. [ Carriage return ] celebrates the limitations of the typewriters mechanisms; at its invention it was a time-saving print technology, yet today it’s slowness attracts a meditation on its physicality and restriction. The mis-hits, mistakes, failures and vulnerability of the medium is seductive, a contradiction to the over-edited and filtered platforms of communication now on offer. These rudimentary sensitive drawings encourage an honesty in the on-going conversation created between two worlds and two experiences.

An emphasis is placed on creating the space for these drawings to be made and to arrive at the door of the other, for the expressions held in print to travel the distance. This means of exchange echoes the actual time it takes to walk from place to place and feels like an almost political act in a world fixated on the immediacy of modern communication. While print technology can now make possible all that we desire, the attraction of exploring a tool used primarily for letter-writing in a world where people no-longer write letters, allows a freedom and abstraction of the drawn line. The physical space is made on the page to depict their perceptions of inhabiting different lives, Lucy’s life expanding through travel, experience and solitude and Hilary’s world contracting through the incubation of pregnancy and the birth of her son. This exhibition is a work-in-progress postal exchange collaboration created on a Tippa Adler & a Beaucourt Script 170 miles apart (or a 2 day, 4 hour walk).