Night Press

Night Press is the printmaking practice of Sunbul Akhtar. By day, she works in publishing as a publisher of a small, quarterly journal, and by night, produces intricately carved linocut prints from her home studio. In 2012, after she suddenly separated from her partner, she jumped into lino printing and found the act of carving to be incredibly therapeutic.

She started working as Night Press in 2019, specifically choosing this name to sell her work for two reasons. Firstly, she prints at night, and secondly because, as she explains; “I was concerned my own name would sound too foreign and may put people off my work. This is a deeply ingrained concern that both forms my work and is distinctly absent from it”.

Sunbul studied Politics and International Relations at university, which continues to trickle into her printmaking. Her work often considers world events, highlighting things including the Srebrenica genocide, arms trade, and post-colonial themes. She also uses printmaking to reconnect with her heritage. She comments; “I am a British Pakistani woman, growing up during the tail end of the National Front and the beginning of the BNP, being Pakistani alone was enough cause for derision. I’m trying to rekindle the heritage that was so derided in my youth with my printmaking.”

Using printmaking as a tool of activism and resistance is present in almost all of Sunbul’s prints. In 2019, she started a series of prints, The Urdu Alphabet Flashcards, in an attempt to reconcile with a history she happened to have inherited. Through these prints, which utilise bright contrasting colours, Sunbul communicates the poetic richness of the Urdu language and demonstrates that cursive, Arabic text is harmless. She describes; “Words in Urdu and Pakistani iconography feature heavily in my portfolio. It has astounded me how people have responded to these prints. I had a show at the Museum of London for their Multilingual London exhibition and when I sell these prints online or at fairs the feedback I get from people who have no connection to the language but appreciate the aesthetic is elating.”

Although she is keen to continue using printmaking as a tool of activism, Sunbul has also been recently working on producing work that is less controversial and is enjoying the popularity they bring on Instagram. “Not everyone wants to read a political statement when they scroll through Instagram and I’m ok with that, it’s just not something the colour of my skin has allowed me to take a break from,” says the printmaker.

Choosing not to stick to a static style of printing, each piece Sunbul produces has a unique process of production. Her blocks are always transferred from tracing paper, which she uses as a final draft before eventually transferring it to the block. For larger composition prints, like her graphic novel posters, Sunbul uses smaller pieces of tracing paper which allow her to move the images around on the block before committing to transferring it. Her favourite part of the printmaking process, however, is the carving; “it is therapeutic and calming”.

Sunbul tells us that her proudest project to date are her graphic novel prints, which include Anna Karenina, Wealth of Nations (starring a tired Adam Smith as the Division of Labour in a Marxist critique of industrial capitalism), and Macbeth. She took a few chapters from Anna Karenina and the Wealth of Nations and turned these into a poster sized print in a graphic novel form. For Macbeth, she used the entire play and depicted it across the print. Every illustration in these works has some symbolism referenced from the text presented within a historical and social context.

@night_press
www.iprintatnight.com

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