Sally Button

I walked up the footpath to Allan Bank on the hottest Saturday of the year so far. A Georgian villa and National Trust property, it is large but homely in appearance, stretching out across the top of a grassy knoll in the Lake District. Grasmere village at the foot of the path was packed with drivers jostling impatiently for parking spaces, and pilgrims in search of its famous gingerbread.

Following her contribution to Reflecting // Processing, a three-day group exhibition at Studio Sanct Manchester this April, I’m lucky enough to be able to encounter Yasaman Mollasalehi’s recent paintings more slowly in the studio. The exhibition itself was brief, almost fleeting. By the time I meet her, the works have already moved back into another kind of life: leaning against walls, propped on the floor, close to the conditions of their making.

Early in our conversation, Lisa Milroy directs her gaze over my left shoulder, gesturing to an artwork on the wall. We’re sitting in a small office adjacent to Artlab Contemporary Print Studios (ACPS), the practice-led research and printmaking studio in Preston where Milroy is currently artist in residence. I pivot, look towards the large monotype, made up of several individual prints positioned to construct the flat patchwork image of a checkered dress.