Biography.
Benet has been making pictures since the mid-1980s. At school, his artworks had a habit of disappearing. He began making prints in 2001, attending Wimbledon College of Art 2002-3. Learning about carborundum printing (from Peter Wray in 2014), and joining DCA print studio (2017) have been transformative for Benet’s creative endeavours.
These days, working at a local University, Benet supports students to explore their creativities for social change. For this, he draws upon lost versions of himself: playing street football in Brasil, suffering abysmal mental health in the South Atlantic, winning critical acclaim for comedy at Edinburgh fringe, failing at graffiti in East Anglia, playing capoeira in Newcastle, staying off social media in Fife, and deconstructing knowledge and power around illness and wellbeing for a living.
When making new pictures, Benet sometimes gets the sensation of re-finding things that were lost. As he often gets tangled in compulsions to rearrange words and letters, he has noticed that losing and finding time in abstract images can be a welcome flight from the limits of written and verbal communication. He feels that making pictures answers a deep desire to release expression, and if successful, opens a pathway to meaning without language. He also believes he is descended from Scottish enlightenment philosopher Thomas Reid, mostly on the basis of having a pointy face.
Tatha show.
The works shown were printed at DCA Dundee using a Rochat etching press, from plates of thin metal or thick card with materials painted or stuck to their surface. I scratch into or work upon these plates to build texture. They can hold ink in their grooves (intaglio) or on their raised surfaces (relief). With each pressing they change slightly, and ink is allowed to accumulate between pressings. I try to respond to possibilities in the plate surface and the ink, so that each print (like a fossilised brushstroke, or a photograph) captures an event that cannot be precisely repeated.
Each image begins with an impression of what it might look like, and develops as ideas drop in. I trust that by allowing the material to act as it will, something unforeseen might emerge. Some accumulated skill leaves a trace on the pictures, but this too may come and go. Just as I learn new techniques, I am always forgetting, sometimes remembering.
Creativity must be given the right to fail, and in my practice, frequently does. In these works, there are multiple failure points: in the concept, in the plate, in the inking, in the pressing. If a picture emerges successfully, it is resolutely present and speaks with its own voice, having overcome a line of challenges. But it also displays its vulnerability, as it could have just as easily not happened at all.