Oliver Hambsch is a print artist originally from Cape Town, South Africa, but currently living in Oslo, Norway. He is PhD researchresearch fellow at Oslo National Academy of the Arts, in the Art and Carft Graphics department conducting research in the field of printmaking, and a member of the Hauntology and Spectrality Research Group based in York St. John University. Oliver graduated from the University of Cape Town, Michaelis School of Fine Art with an MFA in 2022. While his practice is primarily in printmaking, he does work in other disciplines such as music and video. A recurring theme in Oliver’s work is his relationship with memory in its varied forms.

My project, preliminarily titled “Material Memory”, is firmly rooted in printmaking; specifically, the woodcut. I view the woodcut as inherently ‘haunted’, and endeavour to activate its essential spectral qualities. Using VHS home videos from the 1990s as a depature point, I take an interdisciplinary approach to printmaking to explore themes of nostalgia, remembering and forgetting, ambiguous states-of-being and melancholy in a quasi-autobiographical form. By combining a hauntological and a printmaking mode of thought, I attempt to develop a practice that blurs the line between material and immaterial, embraces liminality, ambiguity, and contradiction. In general, I propose that there is a significant overlap between hauntology and print theory, and that the use of a hauntological lens on printmaking – in particular the woodcut – can enhance printmaking in practice and theory. Both fields share a similar lexicon, exemplified by Jennifer Roberts' claim that in a woodcut, "time is always out of joint.". Beyond image-making, I experiment with the materiality of woodcuts, using the woodblocks as an instrument, and approach collaboration as a research method.

Key words: Printmaking, Woodcut, Hauntology, Spectrality, Ghosts