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Hazel Roberts

Updated: Jun 13, 2021

Hazel presented a talk for WYPW about her works and motivations



-Printmaking can sometimes be looked down on against other art mediums. But printmaking has developed and helped revolutions and developed communications

-Hazels inspirations came from artists in the Bauhaus, Dada and Avant Garde, Constructivism, French Cinema and artists such as Varvara Stepanova


-Powerful visual language which denounces what has gone before

-Hazel pulls inspiration from The Working Class Movement Library in Salford


-Hazel used to print at Hot Bed Press in Salford but now due to convenience and times, has her own studio in Bankley studios in Levenshulme


-Prints include masked off small areas and building up lots of layers

-Not spontaneous, very planned




-Hazels prints, Educate, Agitate and Organise won the WYPW Flourish award


-The print Educate, contains newspaper cuttings and labour party prints


-Agitate tries to convey the message of starting to take action, each section of this print was printed separately


-Organise has a structure that starts to come through. The letter included in the print is to do with industrial dispute


-3 prints were produced for the TUC to mark the 150th anniversary and exhibited in a gallery in Manchester


-Carol Ann Duffy, the famous poet was also showing at the event and asked if children had made the prints and also called them paintings

-Hazels next print was 'This is a political painting' takes pride in Hazels technical ability, there were a bank of quotes which relate back to Carol Ann Duffys comments and tried to reflect the technical skill needed to make prints


-The next print had a deliberate childlike feel with oil pastel marks called Shit Poetry



-Hazel works in FE education and has graded observations in which she based a few of her prints inspiration on. Hazel had received awful feedback from an observation with a copy and pasted form with no consideration to the receiver. The print was made with a concertina fold and materials that were deliberately hard to work with to show talent. The print contained lines such as, feedback contained the letter A 141 times.







-Why study the arts? Hazel works in 2 FE colleges and is frustrated by how it is about the paperwork, statistics and not being understood, we don't need students who are battery hens, we need individuality


-The Frankfurt Kitchen was an inspiration to Hazel, rethinking everything afresh, Also Rosa Luxenburgs thoughts



-Hazel likes to add texture into her work and get away from flatness

-Hazel says there is always doubt whilst you're doing things, lots of mistakes in it but everyone goes through that process

-Hazel uses textile screens to get saturation of colour on her paper prints, and tapes off areas and doesn't wash until the end of the run

-Hazel also works on Illustrator at times and then develops these images into screen prints



-Hazel spoke about how Hungarian girls in their science classes in the 1960s, when the world was going through a time of discovery were pushed and encouraged in these areas, This led to a much higher majority of science degrees going to women and inspired the below print.


-Girls with the guns, one girl in the image is more concerned with posing. The mark-making in the print reflects gun marks but then also femininity


-Jayabin Dessi inspired another print concerned about the London marches of Indian women, protesting about the factory conditions they worked in, telling the manager,

"What you are running is not a factory, it is a zoo. But in a zoo there are many types of animals. Some are monkeys who dance on your fingertips. Others are lions who can bite your head off. We are those lions, Mr Manager."



One of Hazels latest works was created by layering and playing with different images she had exposed on screen and prints she had, she is working on an image for Pedal for Progress





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