Rob Ryan

Rob Ryan Textiles for YSP

Rob’s exhibition ‘Listen to the World’ at Yorkshire Sculpture Park has now successfully opened! We took a trip to Yorkshire for the private view and were quite overwhelmed by all the hard work that went into setting up the show by the brilliant team lead by Amanda Peach at YSP.

Rob created merchandise and exclusive editions especially for YSP and as well as a range of ceramics, a multi-coloured lasercut and a limited edition wooden screenprinted clock, which we have previously shown, he has created a tote bag and tea towel.

Rob started out by drawing a section of the print which Libby then scanned and put into repeat. This was then printed out at several different scales to determine which size the print worked best at. Libby even mocked up a paper tote bag with the print to get a better idea of it on the finished product.

Once we were happy with the print it was sent to be sampled. Due to the number of colours in the print the pattern needed to be digitally printed rather than screenprinted.

Rob started with the wording ‘Declare War On Hate! 1,000000%‘ and after feedback from YSP they suggested ‘Listen to the World‘, the title of Rob’s show would tie in well – Rob agreed and amended the artwork!

There were lots of different components of the bag to consider, the lining, straps, and interfacing which were sampled separately and tweaked along the way before we received the final made up tote bag sample.

For the tea towel, for this the pattern was printed on white rather than the dark navy background. We added ‘RR for YSP‘ in the bottom right starburst, a nice additional way to mark the collaboration.

All of Rob’s merchandise and special editions can be purchased directly from Yorkshire Sculpture Park and from their online shop.

‘Listen to the World‘ runs until 1st November at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, if you’re interested in hearing more about the work behind the show check out this brilliant interview with Rob for the Guardian.

Sarah McPhee
Studio Assistant