Printmaking as a practice often relies on access to equipment such as presses, exposure units, acid baths and other chemicals that aren't affordable, practical nor safe for a home environment.
As a consequence of the enforced regulations surrounding COVID-19, many creatives have lost access to studios and artmaking facilities. This 'new-normal' brought on by social isolation (as no surprise) has affected artmaking practices in a multitude of ways. We wanted to share how workspaces, practices, collaboration, and sources of inspiration have shifted and adapted as artists moved from studio to home.
Print in Isolation presents projects from thirteen emerging women printmakers, who navigate this new found ISOLATION through unorthodox, exploratory, and innovative print methodologies and outputs. The online exhibition seeks to highlight the ongoing practices of artists and how their processes, ideas and research have evolved or regressed during this change. Each artist and ‘project’ reveals a new insight into how an artist's practice may develop, not only during a global pandemic, but perpetually as making environments and social patterns evolve.
The removal of studio access has allowed, or more appropriately, forced printmakers to challenge what printmaking is, encouraging experimentation with substrates and contexts. This is demonstrated by artists moving beyond familiar print traditions and exploring new forms of print-media, such as: photo emulsion transfers, eco-dyeing, performance-installation, and sculpture. This oscillation between the new, the old and the inbetween underpins the online exhibition, as the artists negotiate the suspension of normality with unfamiliar materials, and the necessity to appreciate process over product. The artists enact this by shifting focus from the final, polished print or edition, to the development of a print or matrix instead. This is seen in the form of preliminary sketches and drawings, artist journals, and the sustainable practice of recycling old prints for new works, or revisiting previous - perhaps unresolved - projects.
Artistic practice in isolation asks for slowness, quietness and stillness, offering many of the artists a momentary recess to be reflective, and observe the often unobserved. This prevails with explorations of the everyday and daily essentialism, and through investigations into our connectedness with others and our environments. Many of the artists recognise the effect how our confined spaces may evoke reflections of the self and psyche, and our public and private realities. In strange and confusing times, art making can be difficult, but may also serve as a form of catharsis; a meditative and familiar distraction amongst uncertainty, embodied through muscle-memories and mark-marking as a means of expression and acknowledgment.
Printmaking from home is not always comfortable, that much is evident, yet it is from this discomfort that innovation emerges, ferments, and thrives. This is an unconventional time, so here is our unconventional exhibition, and some beautiful, unconventional works.
Curated by Jennifer Brady, Millie Mitchell & Sarah Rose
If you wish to purchase any of the artworks in the exhibition, please contact the artist directly through the links to their socials and/or website.
More Than Reproduction is a collective of Sydney-based emerging creatives with a passion for all things printmaking. We aim to celebrate and promote female-identifying artists, curators and creatives, with a particular focus on printmaking practices and themes of femininity, womanhood and equality. We strongly believe in equal representation and opportunity. More Than Reproduction seeks to provide a platform for women in printmaking to have their voice heard and thrive.
We acknowledge and pay respect to the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the traditional custodians of the land of which More Than Reproduction was founded and operates. We extend our respects to all First Nations people, acknowledging that sovereignty was never ceded.
