Earlier this year I published a book called Bad Island, little knowing that humankind was about to be faced with a global pandemic of viral pneumonia. I had thought that a brittle tale of allegorical nihilism told over the course of eighty lionocuts would have been just what was needed by a jaded citizenry, battered by the tides of right-wing populism sweeping the shores and inlands of almost every continent. But no! Who could have foretold, eight months later, that the very same citizenry would be battered, and yes, jaded, by COVID19? Not me, that's for sure. Prophecy is not my forté; predictions of the future are simply not my thing. Which brings me neatly to the subject of this here missive; two new prints from the Slowly Downward Manufactory.
Within the pages of Bad Island are two images of something I find both deeply horrifying & perversely beautiful: atomic explosions. I wondered how I might convey such an thing, in the rather stark medium of the linocut, & these are two attempts to do so. These explosions - mushroom clouds - appear quite late in Bad Island, & thus, in my allegorical telling, quite late in the span of human existence. 
From these twin images of terrible explosions I have made two prints; Pale Ghost & Dark Ghost. These prints have been made by photographing the actual inked linocut & then creating a pared-down version of that photograph so that it can be sceeen printed with several greys & a very shiny black to demonstrate & represent the actuality of the surface of the cut lino - the gouged surface of the areas cut away, essentially. This is in contrast to the simpler pure black images shown in the book. Eagle-eyed persons may also notice that these are a mirror image of those in the book, as these prints are taken from photographs of the actual cut lino itself, rather than a print taken from the same.
This is a strange time, & no inference or polemical statement should be inferred from these images, or the fact that the Slowly Downward Manufactory should publish the editions at this moment in human history. We make no judgements, & ask only that art should speak only for itself, & that citizens draw their own conclusions from the evidence laid out before them.