1. SQUISH OR SQUASH

The full title for this artwork is SQUISH OR SQUASH: THE MOUSE PRESSING CONUNDRUM.

Like the artwork you may have scanned to reach this more complete iteration, this artwork is dense in content and tells a number of narratives simultaneously.

This is a primary example of how the act of printmaking has been used as a tool itself to pose questions about elitism and power hierarchies in the artistic world.

I illustrate myself using two of my printing presses, one of them an antique and the other one self invented.

By way of absurd humour, I imagine two conflicting methods which are competing with one another for dominance.

The Mouse Pressing Conundrum asks the universal question: if "mouse squishing" and "mouse squashing" end up with the same results, by which parameters can I judge one as being better than the other?

The Mouse Pressing metaphor is a demonstration of the arbitrariness of categories we create to categorize our experiences.

All of the other content in the GIF is intimately involved with demonstrating how these questions have played off in my life as an artist.

This GIF has resulted from an interactive art project called "Trollz-r-us" where I indulge in imaginary feuds with people. Tanya Hart was the original "mouse squasher" and I have included the second GIF which shows her "squashing" a mouse.

THE MOUSE PRESSING CONUNDRUM: Squish or Squash?

Every single item has any number of interpretations. I consider that the ones you make are equally valid to the ones I make.  The books at the bottom left symbolise the ancient traditions of mouse pressing which are used by mouse pressers to give their bizarre practices validity.

You can see a more detailed analysis of this complex artwork on the desktop version of this page.

I created the artwork below for THE HAND: The Magazine for Reproduction Based Art. It appears in edition 49 (July 2025). This artwork incorporates into it a scanable QR-Code which allows the readers of the magazine immediate access to this multimedia representation on their smartphones. This was Adam Finkelston's idea who offered me the chance to present my work which involved in a dynamic way printmaking practice as much as the products it produces.

I dedicate this work to Adam Finkelston and Tanya Hart. The artwork as it appeared in the magazine to Adam, and both of these final GIFs to Tanya. These people were essential to the creation of these artworks, and it is for this reason that I consider them collaborative: expressions of interactive art.

You can actually send GIFs in the "mousepressing" series by typing tags like "mousesquishing" or "mousepressing" into the GIF box of any social media app like facebook, instagram or whatsapp.