- Venue
- Various
- Location
- North East England
If, for you, the term printmaking conjures associations of the traditional intaglio printing press and the solitary artist-printmaker (the likes of George Stubbs or Rembrandt van Rijn) or of the reproduction of original art works then the survey of contemporary printmaking represented in the 2011 International Print Biennale is about to reconfigure all those ideas.
I began my foray into the Biennale at Newcastle University’s Hatton Gallery (one of the 3 venues, along with Northern Print and Laing Art Gallery, hosting the 2011 Print Awards). Despite their representing a huge diversity of techniques, themes and media within the Biennale there was, even from the outset, an impression of sensitive curation uniting the works and enriching their conversant qualities. In the first room of the Hatton the works of Nicholas Devison, Sunju Lee and James Hugonin all touched upon the fallibility of sight and perception of illusory space inherent in the printed image. Hugonin’s prints, with their direct lineage from his ongoing series of paintings, also introduced a consideration of how the process of collaboration between the artist, print maker and process takes place; how this is negotiated and what is the creative input of all parties into the generation of a new print.
The ‘space’ in which the image is generated, operates, and incites different encounters is interrogated further in the second room of the Hatton. In Emanuelle Giora’s No Way Back the white, ‘negative space’ of paper becomes an endless expanse into which men throw themselves off a diving board. Whilst, in contrast, Mariana Moranduzzo’s boulder-like etching and drawing on a sculptural form From Earth physically embodies the potentiality of paper not simply as a support but as a force for the generation of new ideas and forms.
From the development of the printing press (which gradually democratized knowledge through the wider distribution of information); to religious and political pamphleteer campaigns; through to the printed stickers and stencils of recent street art; no examination of printmaking would be complete without some mention of politics. In Barthélémy Toguo’s Who is the True Terrorist? and The New World Climax, Toguo has transformed the rubber stamps associated with airports and border controls into gigantic, hewn wooden stamps used for undermining the homogenisation of the “rubber stamp” through the unique and hand-made quality of the resultant woodcutprints.
My next stop on the Biennale trail, sign posted by Parra’s striking screen printed festival posters, was the Laing Art Gallery. The first room of the show was loaded with the debris and residues of various personal, public or environmental disasters. The interrelationship between private and global disaster is directly referenced in Sarah Gittins’ Cyclone Installation; a wall-based drawing with screen printed elements in which every day objects and ephemera – including newspapers proclaiming “Oil supplies are running out fast” – are whipped up by a hurricane.
The main room features some of this festival’s big acts (whether in terms of scale or reputation) from Jake and Dinos Chapman’s Etchasketchathon collection of prints to Katsutoshi Yuasa’s epic, prize-winning woodcuts Pseudo Mythology #2. Also numbering amongst this years prize winners on display here is Rew Hanks and his series of 3 large scale lino cuts Hunter and Collector, King Bungaree at the Bottle Tree and Macquarie’s Chair. These intensely detailed pieces seem to seethe with latent meaning; every square inch of the images loaded with texture, historical references and psychological metaphors. The reappropriation and restaging of historical source material is a process which appears to run through a number of the works on display including Ian Brown’s Natural Disasters series of prints taken originally from dated postcards depicting volcanic eruptions.
To talk about contemporary Printmaking as a single discipline is to talk about a way of working and generating images which is completely varied and chameleon in its means and manifestations. This is demonstrated through the works on display at Vane’s new gallery space at Commercial Union House, in Simon Le Ruez’s solo show. This is where we find his relationship to print is one of intervention, appropriation and transformation. Through his physical interventions with existing printed images (such as black and white stills from Ingmar Bergman films), he charges these images with a new magical, ambiguous quality, drawing them in to a colourful, chimerical inner world. As part of the Biennale Le Ruez and Adam Burns – whose solo exhibition Absolute Colour Space is also showing at Vane – worked in collaboration with Hole Editions and Northern Print (respectively) to produce new, limited edition prints. In Le Ruez’s 7 colour lithograph print Elizabet, the artist incorporates primitively hand-drawn, seemingly 3 dimensional, globules and twisting marks with an existing black and white film still to confuse the illusion of dimensionality and to stir a strange, ominous atmosphere like that of a B-movie re-imagined by a child.
One of the delights on my brief tour of the International Print Biennale was Nous Vous’ show Odd Collection at the Newcastle Arts Centre. With a palette of bright, unmixed colours and innocent, almost naïve drawing style, this collection epitomised the phrase “simple forms, complex operations”. Their format correlating to that of propaganda posters, these prints featured simple motifs and statements which gently invite the viewer to slow down, to enter the space of imagination, to “Wander and Wonder” or reassuring us with slogans such as “Do not be afraid” wrapped around a paper mountain. These seemingly simplistic statements and images work together, both individually and cumulatively, to envelop the viewer in a bubble of positive feeling that lingers well after leaving the show.
My final stop on the tour of the Biennale was the warm and (for a dark autumnal day) unexpectedly light gallery and studios at Northern Print in Ouseburn. Upon entering the gallery I was surprised to find, rather than the usual quiet, underpopulated white space one comes to expect from a gallery, a frisson of energy and a large group of people talking quietly whilst they stood, shoulder to shoulder, cutting away at the largest piece of lino imaginable. One of the volunteers, on spotting my curiosity, explained it was a giant lino cut they were going to print with the aid of a steam roller the following week. On display in the gallery are Dawn Coles’s series of solar plate etchings, including Men Had Eyes Removed. On first glance these prints appear like elegant lacy doilies but upon closer inspection the viewer realises they are composed of sentences whose looping ascenders, tails and serifs become fragments of a pattern, repeated and overlaid until it’s meaning becomes almost indecipherable. The sentences which occasionally emerge from this camouflage (such as ‘ Men had eyes removed’) were taken from the diary of a VAD nurse based in France during the first world war and as such this layering and eschewing of easy reading could be interpreted as a questioning of, or gesture towards, the confabulation of memory, indoctrination and propaganda. In contrast, Janet Mullarney’s ‘Urban Print’ presents a found printing technique very directly; through a closely-shot film of an Indian street vendor magically unfurling a beautifully patterned print onto a concrete floor.
Overall my experience of the International Print Biennale so far has been, like all the best festivals, one of overwhelming scope and diversity. But unlike the best music festivals some of these works and exhibitions are in the region for a while (until the end of November) and, as such, offer a unique opportunity to revisit, rethink and savour some of these pieces whilst they’re here.
Review commissioned by All Points North http://allpointsnorth.info/
The International Print Biennale is a partner of All Points North, an
initiative set up to profile major contemporary art spaces, events and festivals happening across the North of England this Autumn.
Visit the website at http://allpointsnorth.info
Iris Aspinall Priest ©
