Collection Postcard
Ellen Gallagher, DeLuxe, 2004 - 2005

Ellen Gallagher
DeLuxe, 2004 - 2005
Photogravure, etching, aquatint, dry-point, lithography, screenprint, embossing, tattoo-machine engraving, laser cutting, chine collé, Plasticine, paper collage, enamel, gouache, pencil, oil, polymer, watercolour, pomade, velvet, glitter, crystals, gold leaf and toy eyeballs in a grid of sixty prints
Each 33 x 26.67cm, to be hung 5 high by 12 across
Overall 215 x 447cm

It took well over a year for Ellen Gallagher to complete DeLuxe, an ambitious portfolio of sixty prints created using a wide array of print making techniques. The images are based on advertisements promoting cosmetic ‘improvements’ found in otherwise rather radical Black or African American magazines such as Ebony, Our World and Sepia, published between 1939 and 1972. The adverts were largely promoting products that fit the white archetypes of beauty; hair straighteners, wigs, even skin whitening cream. Gallagher modified and transformed the images, cutting the wigs out, drawing on or otherwise transforming them with collage. These final collages she then often turned into photogravures.

Photogravure is known for creating incredibly flat and ‘seamless’ images, which Gallagher then went on to retexture. For example, by including Plasticine wigs and masks or with the addition of rhinestones, glitter, coconut oil, pomade or gold leaf. Her additions are meant to give an idea of mutability or shifts, alluding to animation, but also showing how penmanship is not fixed in history.

DeLuxe and Gallagher’s wider body of work, especially around this time, confronts the history of black representation. Using historical and vernacular imagery she explores how the historic seeds of representation still have an impact on the lived condition of blackness in America today. DeLuxe in particular focusses on the complex role hair plays in black culture. Through this the printmaking techniques and concept align, as texture is a central to both Gallagher’s prints and the distinction between Afro or European hair types.