2023
New news!
Natasha Norman participates in a prestigious print exhibition in London, UK. She says:
"I'm delighted to announce that my print (Midnight)' has been selected for the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers (RE) International Original Print
Exhibition 2023.
The exhibition will run from 21 September – 1 October 2023 at Bankside Gallery, London. If you are based in the UK please do pop in and see the exhibition which is a juried selection of international prints of the highest quality. I am thrilled to be showing in such incredible company.
Originally known as the Society of Painter-Etchers, the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers (RE) was founded by Francis Seymour Haden in 1880 in reaction to the Royal Academy of Arts' reluctance to exhibit etchings and engravings. Their Royal Charter was received from Queen Victoria in 1888."
'Moonshadow
(Midnight)' 2023 Monotype Image size:
62 x 48 cm
Congratulations from us all!
Three of our members
participate in The Printing Girls' exhibition 25 YEARS 25 PRINTS at the Artvark Gallery in Cape Town.
See the gallery exhibition link HERE
Laurel Holmes
'The weight of 25' 2023 Monotype with handmade ink Size: 20 x 20 cm
I have been interested in bringing a materiality (or even more of it into my work). One of the concepts I have been working with over the last couple of years has been fire. So making the ink from wood soot or fynbos charcoal collected from a local reserve's scheduled burn has been a further development towards this notion of fire. 'The weight of 25' was made using a batch of ink made with 25 grams of soot.
Natasha Norman
'Looking from below' 2021 Lithographic ink on hand-made Washi paper Size: 49 x 24 cm
'Looking
from Below' is influenced by looking under the ocean's face where the surface
of the water can be read as sky. I am reminded that our sky is an atmospheric
surface. Such surfaces reflect the ever-changing impressions of forces
otherwise unseen: wind, tide and current.
My approach to art making is to slow time, to process an image through a medium that operates at a time crafted from hand-worked surfaces and materials. Currently, I am the only South African artist working predominantly in the Japanese relief print method, Mokuhanga.
Marelise van Wyk
'From the root 2' 2022 Collage etching and collograph Size: 38 x 59 cm
In this work I attempt to illustrate our
collective and personal pasts, linking the narratives of history, nature, and
humanity in interconnected existence.
Roots taken from my garden after a session of weeding and printed on blotting paper with an assortment of inks, resulted in sharply-defined imprints intertwined with softer, bled transfers. This juxtaposition expresses the parallels between our life experiences, emphasising the often stark yet intermittently indistinct interconnections. Simon’s Town, a place indelibly etched into South African history, provides the historic imagery for this mixed-media presentation. Copper plate etchings depict the railing designs surrounding the graves in the historic cemetery - a silent reminder to the passage of time.
A select portion of these images were printed on dried algae, recovered from a dry riverbed during the drought in Cape Town a few years ago. This nature-made paper symbolises resilience, survival, and adaptation amidst adversity, linking back to the theme of interconnectivity.
Congratulations from us all!
LONDON ORIGINAL PRINT FAIR (LOPF)
Somerset House, Strand, London.
38th edition of the Fair.
30 March - 02 April 2023
'LOPF 2023 -Views and impressions' by Johann Booyens
In a word: conservative. Maybe a single word is unfair since 'conservative' is often considered unoriginal. But my experience of the 2023 London Original Art Fair proved to be slightly underwhelming. Compared to Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair it was smaller, more high-end, and less accessible for new collectors; to the Impact Printmaking Conference in Bristol, less experimental; and to Wells Contemporary, less exploratory. The conservatism was probably the result of the Fair showing works from the stables of around 40 commercial galleries, while only a few non-gallery stands were represented. That said, the Fair showed high quality works featuring a large array of styles and techniques.
Overall, the
work seemed to fit into specific, commercially-trusted categories: traditional/classical (Rembrandt, Durer), modern (Picasso, Kandinsky, Moore, Rembrandt, Durer, Freud, Lichtenstein), contemporary Brit Pop (Riley, Emin) current day Pop derivative (neon circles with bulldogs and flags, reminiscent of Lichtenstein Pop), contemporary Japanese woodcuts, and for us South Africans, a few small, older Kentridges. Not much exciting in between, as I had hoped for. But I was glad to see the names of rising artists popping up occasionally, giving encouragement that hard work and dedication ultimately may triumph.
Although this sounds like negative feedback, I thoroughly enjoyed many works, never having before seen prints by Freud, or Kandinsky in the flesh. Nor was
I disappointed by the technical 'wow' of many prints, such as Sarah Gillespie’s mezzotints (Rabley
Gallery) and the Japanese woodcuts. But I felt there were few “oh my!” images and many “interesting, but let’s move on” kinds of work.
Verbatim Gallery (a non-gallery) was the endeavour of four artists coming together by word-of-mouth, hiring a stand, and exhibiting their own prints. In this self-represented space, the only one of its kind, the artists discussed their own works with the public. Here, consistent quality was coupled with individually defined bodies of work. The prints were notably less-expensive, and this was reflected in the sales as the stand was one of the few with at least one third of the works having red dots (I attended on the last day of the Fair).
Besides Verbatim, there
were a few printmaking organisations (Art China and ICA) promoting their cause, and featuring very different works compared to the bulk of exhibitors. Kunstverket Galleri from Oslo showed true Scandinavian
minimalist brilliance; and Tate and the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) exhibited more 'difficult' work.
In my opinion, the title of ‘most impressive’ went to the Royal Society of Painters/Printmakers. For an artist to add ARE (Associate Member of The Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers) or RE (full member of the Society) to their name indicates that their work has been through peer scrutiny, and comes with academic gravitas, an exhibition history, ongoing involvement in the arts, and serious who’s-who ass-kissing. I was delighted to see an artist who I know with an ARE status, which made the high bar feel somehow more attainable. The individual works exhibited at this stand were of superior technical quality and extremely professionally presented, but image-wise there was nothing too radical/conceptual.
On the Pop
side of things, an (un)original Murakami, clearly a commercial litho print signed in the plate by the artist, failed to impress, as did the Hirst butterfly print. It also seemed that artists Barbara Rae, Peter Doig, and Tracey Emin were represented every 15 feet across
the entire Fair (who knows why?). The usual bright and all things
plastic types of work were in no short supply. However, from indicated sales, it appears that
this trend of expensive, in-the-name-of-electro-funk is becoming less
popular.
In conclusion, LOPF 2023 featured predominantly commercial galleries showing work to sell rather than impress. It may be that the economic slump and the high costs of exhibiting at LOPF forced galleries to exhibit the safe and well-proven rather than take risks with new artists or present unexpected types of work, although it appeared that those few who did were rewarded by sales. The Fair this year shifted into a particular aspect of the UK artworld that represents conservative practice and stability in its market. To introduce more radically creative works in between its barriers would have not been easy, but would have been valuable.
Given the chance, I would visit the London Original Art Fair next year without hesitation. Year after year it is wholly
successful in what it sets out to achieve: namely, to provide the space for a selection of high-end galleries to exhibit their artists' prints with the clear economic imperative of promoting printmaking as a collectable art medium.