This book was produced during the Coronavirus pandemic in 2021 as part of the Advanced Printmaking course at City Lit. During lockdown the students were not able to use the studio at CityLit so techniques were used that were possible to do at home without a printing press.

Inspiration came from the book Solaris written by Stanislaw Lem and the 1972 Russian film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. The story is about a psychologist Kris Kelvin who arrives at a space station to investigate what is happening to a group of scientists who are conducting scientific experiments using radiation, on the planet Solaris. The crew are being haunted by hallucinations or apparations from their former lives and imagination.

Shortly after Kris arrives on the space station he begins to have visitations and sees a copy of his wife Rheya. Rheya had previously committed suicide after Kelvin had left her. Kris believes at first that he is dreaming but after the other crew members can aslo see his wife he realises she is actually there.

The book is a continuation on a theme that was worked on last year about memory and hallucination. Do we ever lose people close to us when they pass away or are they always with us embedded in our consciousness? What is real and what isn’t? 

An object, place, moment in time, a fragment of music or bird call can bring back a memory or thought about the person who isn’t with us. The person need not be dead for a sensory stimulation to create a visitation of their being in our minds. It’s a yearning to be with the loved person, to hear them speak to touch them and share a joke with them again.