Rohini Devasher, Elseworld, Photo etching printed on Velin Arches Blanc paper and bubble digitally printed on Kozo Japanese paper – Asuka (bright white 48gsm) and applied using chine collé, 41.3 x 29.5 inches, 2019 

The bubble is somehow the most intimate of spheres. With humble beginnings, a thin soap-water-soap layer that assembles by itself around air, the bubble nevertheless takes us with it as it climbs into the sky.  Look into a bubble and you will see its shifting iridescent colours, look closer and you might see the sun  reflecting off the oceans of a distant planet, refracting through clouds seen from thousands of kilometres  away. An iridescent micro-sphere, capable of defying gravity, a bubble is also an island in the sky, an  elseworld, equally fragile and whole. 

Though compositionally quite simple, this edition of 20 photo-etchings co-produced at the Glasgow Print  Studios with Master printer Alistair Gow, proved to be technically complex. An exhaustive series of tests  and experiments were done to arrive at the right dot, dpi, exposure and etch timings so the subtleties of the clouds could be retained. The image after being digitally corrected for contrast etc was printed onto acetate and then exposed onto a prepared steel plate coated with a light sensitive emulsion. Once developed, they were coated with aquatint and etched. Each plate was then printed individually by hand. 

The bubble was more challenging. In order to retain the detail on the bubble the process of Chine-colle was used in conjunction with the photo-etch. Chine-colle is a technique in printmaking, in which the image is transferred to a surface such as Japanese Kozo – Asuka (bright white 48gsm) paper or linen which pull finer details off the plate, which is then bonded to the heavier paper during the printing process. In this case the bubble was digitally printed onto rice paper.