12 September 2014

Reminder: Impressive 5 - Wansolwara, by 17Sept

Just a reminder to get your prints in for the 5th Impressive printmaking show
which will be held at Nathan Homestead, in Manurewa, Auckland. 
This year the show is titled Wansolwara: Print Here and Now, 
and is open to NZ artists working in any print medium. 

Artists are invited to submit up one or two images for selection for the show. 
Images to be saved as jpeg with maximum size of 1000 pixels the longest side image dimension.
Entries need to have been made by the artist, within the last 12 months.
With your image, please supply: Medium, Title of Work, Date of Work, Size,
Work can be unframed or freestanding, so indicate if any specific display or installation instructions.
All artists submitting work are required to submit a 200-300 word statement 
regarding the work and the basis of their practice. 

Enter by email to Steve LovettCerisse Palagi, or Struan Hamilton by Wednesday 17 September
All artists will be informed by email of the curators’ decision by Friday 26 September. 
Work will be delivered to Nathan Homestead by Friday 17 October. 

08 September 2014

Antipodes, 14Sept-1Oct, Auckland

Antipodes features an exchange between Sydney Printmakers and members of CPCANZ
The exhibition will be on at Northart Gallery in Auckland
from 15 September to 1 October, with the opening function on Sunday 14 September.


Following this, the exhibition will be shown in Sydney
at Pine Street Creative Arts Gallery from 11-22 November.

05 September 2014

Studio Visit: Graham Hall

Art teacher and long-time printmaker Graham Hall works in a small print studio,
situated in suburban Aramoho, on the banks of the Whanganui River.
Graham Hall concentrates mainly on woodcut, monotype and drypoint printmaking processes.


Although AP studios has existed as a print studio for the last 8 years,
this print room set-up has been in its present location for three year.
Approximately 5x6m, the studio is good size for a sole printmaker,
although Graham says he still has to 'move stuff to get to other stuff - a little bit like tetris'.
especially when changing from one printing processes to another.



 Graham's large printing press was built in 1996
at the Wanganui Regional Polytechnic, Quay School of the Arts.
Under the expert tutelage of Marty Vreede (as Head of the Printmaking department),
close to 100 third-year Fine Arts printmaking students built their own press!
This particular press has an 86cm bed and is used for both drypoint and multi-block woodcut.
There have been a number of small modifications to the press over the years.
Replacing the steel bed for a resin bed has helped in keeping the travel of the press bed straight and true. Various grease nipples have been added to improve the press action. 

Occasional and informal workshops are held at the AP studios.
These visits are usually made when other printmakers are interested in a particular printmaking process
or in need access to a large press.
 

In the room next door is Leigh Anderton-Hall's art studio, housing a beautiful old Seggie Press,
which was built in the 1800’s by Alexander Seggie, an engineer from Edinburgh, Scotland.
A number of these presses were shipped to New Zealand.
This heavy cast iron beast is used primarily for monotype and drypoint printmaking.


A few technical points about the Aramoho Printmakers studio:
The tools used with woodcut a mixture of Pfeil chisels with the wooden stems cut back to fit into the hand. Various scrapers and creble’ tools are used in combination with chisel marks.
The drypoint tools are made from silver steel and then tempered to produce and incredibly fine sharp line.
The printing inks used in the studio are Charbonnel for drypoint
and Hostmann-Steinberg impression inks for the woodcut. Both inks are oil-based.
For monotype printmaking the Akua water-based inks are used.

In July Graham taught a workshop in multi-block process to a group of Art teachers
at the recent Art Teachers conference in Auckland.
  Like all print process this technique has been adapted, changed and modified
to suit Graham's particular way of working, occasionally teaching this process to interested printmakers.

Graham Hall, Heroes Journey
4-block woodcut

 This recent 4-block print is part of a show Graham has been working towards,
 this final print is the culmination of three years' work.
It is part of the Heroes Journey; after the mythologist Joseph Campbell (The Hero of a Thousand Faces).
This print is part of 12 works that will be on show in Space Gallery in Wanganui in October.

Graham Hall also has work in Solander Gallery in Wellington
and in private and public institutions throughout New Zealand and overseas.

01 September 2014

Studio Visit: Steve Lovett

Steve Lovett and I have been friends for a long time, 
and from the first time I visited Steve's home workshop I was green with envy!
Attached to his house, on the suburban border of Ponsonby,
the studio space had a previous life as a local dairy.

With an amazing library on one wall, and a blank gallery wall for displaying on the other side,
plenty of space and natural light, I honestly think his studio is bigger than my whole apartment!!!

Steve Lovett's print studio at home

"The studio is the place where I work almost everyday. 
Its a bit of tip at the moment because I have several projects on the go, 
so I sort of wade through the chaos to the various work stations to progress the projects. 
The studio is a laboratory, a physical space where meaning is made and remade, 
broken up, reconfigured, discarded and retrieved and then sent out again into the world. 


This current body of work is made up from the collections of photographs and printed ephemera 
that I have inherited and that I been trawling from markets & junk shops for over 3 decades. 
More recently these images have come from online sources. 
My interest pre-digital era ‘vernacular’ photography has been augmented 
by abandoned family photo albums and product photography.  
Here, this ‘vernacular’ becomes a strategy to refer to a locus of expression 
within photographic image making that is everywhere, nowhere and anywhere simultaneously. 
The activity of collecting images discarded by other people 
has developed as a response to the overabundance of images in print and online. 
The image hoarding has developed focus in an ongoing project, ‘Some people who may (not) here’. 

Steve Lovett, Some people who may (not) here, 2014
Screenprinted concertina book

Steve Lovett
working model in progress for the 2014 Sketchbook Project

The work involves using pre-photoshop techniques of 'stripping together' different images 
to reconstruct a new image - fictionalised response to missing information in the found images. 
Over the summer and into next year this work will result in exhibiting 100 of these images, 
along with several book and some new larger screen printed works.
This work can be seen at http://stevepepper1.tumblr.com/

Wash-out area in Steve Lovett's studio

I'm not terribly wedded to any process or way of working. 
Except, for this bit of my process, I need to make something everyday. 
I tend to process ideas through making. 
Different projects require different strategies, materials, tools. 
But what I do around making is a lot of looking and reading about print, 
about anything that can help with the generation of work."