expand, contract, expand again

21 May - 7 June 2024 | PCA Gallery, Southbank, VIC

Contemporary printmaking is permeated by paradox, whereby it simultaneously relies upon and collapses tradition. There is an inherent tension between the impetus of maintaining and acknowledging print’s technical specificity and process-driven nature, and the allure to push, pull and stretch its boundaries. 

Curated by More Than Reproduction, this group exhibition explores the materiality of contemporary print-practice, departing from convention to present new ways of working with and understanding the potential of an impervious, yet increasingly malleable medium. With printmaking existing within the interstitial depths of the past and the seductive surface of the present, this exhibition aims to navigate the shift towards print hybridity, welcoming the incursions of other mediums, utilising unorthodox substrates, and engaging in dimensionality within an expanded field.

Artists Bridget Baskerville, Elizabeth Knuckey, and Bella La Spina adopt haptic print methodologies to traverse multiple locations and temporalities. The exhibition is underpinned by notions of site, positionality and transition. This is seen through site-specific screenprinting, archival investigations of place, and experimentations with site as an active collaborator. 

More Than Reproduction (MTR) is a Sydney-based artist-run printmaking initiative dedicated to strengthening discourse and bolstering printmaking practices in Australia. Founded in March 2019 by artists Jennifer Brady and Millie Mitchell, and curator Sarah Rose, MTR strives to build a sense of creative community, and provide a platform for female-identifying and gender diverse artists at all stages in their careers, most prominently early-career practitioners. They produce an ongoing program of monthly online artist profiles, interviewing emerging Australian printmakers, as well as regularly curating group exhibitions and facilitating public programs and workshops. These opportunities foster a multigenerational and multidisciplinary peer-support network that centres artists’ wellbeing, congeniality, and professional development.

This project is assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.