Maggie Stein, Kissing the Earth, linocut, 53 x 55 cm. Photo: Belco Arts.
Belco Arts is Canberra’s premier regional public arts centre. It consistently punches above its weight with exhibitions that are frequently pioneering, exciting and well worth seeing.
Canberra was once the national capital for printmaking with a huge presence at the Canberra School of Art, dedicated works on paper, commercial art galleries and public access print workshops.
Those glory days of the 1980s have long passed, and the mantle may have shifted to Melbourne and Sydney, but interest in printmaking remains vibrant in the national capital, and Megalo in Kingston continues to offer an active, open-access printmaking workshop with a program of print exhibitions.
Kay Watanabe, Gentle Flow, monotype, 30 x 30 cm. Photo: Belco Arts
Belco Arts put a call out to printmakers throughout Australia to participate in an exhibition with the theme of Habitat – “being the place or environment where we as humans, plants, or animals naturally are located or have found ourselves residing in”. The response has been overwhelming, with approximately 200 prints displayed on the walls in what is a very crowded exhibition.
An open invitation has resulted in an open field of participants. Some of them are the big names in Australian printmaking, including Kay Watanabe, John Pratt, Andrew Totman, Christine Upton and Jo Hollier. In contrast, others are newcomers to printmaking, and there is frequently a degree of uncertainty in their work. There is also a sprinkling of artists who are new to the scene and who are already making exciting work.
John Pratt, Edge, woodcut, 80 x 70 cm. Photo: Belco Arts.
What is the attraction of printmaking?
Some are drawn to the idea of a democratic multiple. In other words, from the same matrix – a woodblock, block of lino, a metal etching plate or a lithographic stone, among others – an artist may be able to print an edition of original prints. Whereas a painting may cost $10,000, an original print by the same artist may cost only $500, allowing many people to own a piece of high-quality original art.
Also, each printmaking technology has its own unique qualities, so what an artist can achieve in an etching, linocut, lithograph or screenprint cannot be achieved in any other art medium. Prints by Rembrandt, Goya, Picasso and Whistler are valued on par with their paintings.
Women artists dominate the huge Belco Arts show. I would estimate that about 80 per cent of the participating artists are women. Printmaking generally attracts more women than men and, more speculatively, the tree-hugging theme of this show may also appeal more to women than to men.
The printmakers in this show employ a wide range of printmaking technologies, including relief printmaking, lithography, etching, screen printing, monotypes and monoprints, collagraphs, cyanotype, mezzotint and others. Despite the complexity of the technique, many of the prints have a starkness in imagery that underlines our vulnerability and the mood of existing on the eve of destruction.
Fatima Killeen, We are what we grow, collagraph, 80 x 60 cm. Photo: Belco Arts
In such a crowded exhibition, it may be foolhardy to speak of highlights; however, Kay Watanabe’s monotype, Gentle Flow, is one of those wonderful, eternal images that invite you to merge into the work and contemplate the passage of time. Maggie Stein’s masterful linocut, Kissing the Earth, has a richness of detail within an overall simplicity, while John Pratt’s woodcut Edge plays with ideas of precariousness and that faint demarcation line between survival and destruction.
Marc Renshaw’s bold screenprint, Arterial Jams, is a brilliant work that operates as a visual time bomb, gradually revealing itself with prolonged viewing. In Andrew Totman’s Star intersects – revisited monotype our precarious existence is projected onto a cosmic level. Fatima Killeen’s highly accomplished collagraph, We are what we grow, is a mesmerising study in harmony and restrained beauty. Damon Kowarsky’s Gulumada II intaglio print is moody and monumental despite its modest proportions, while Peter McLean’s monotype Diversity Cluster is another of these quiet gems that grow on you as you pause with the work.
Damon Kowarsky, Gulumada II, etching and aquatint, 30 x 40 cm. Photo: Belco Arts.
There are several wonderful relief prints by Christine Upton, the finest of which is Bush Music 4/7, also Jo Hollier’s spectacular collagraph Grassy woodlands and Jerry Doherty’s clever and effective monoprint Bush Walk. Among the many other exceptional artists participating, I would like to note Lisa Marshall, Libby Parke, Amanda Western, Carolyn Price, Kylie Harries, Francis Jaye Johnson, Elizabeth Barr, Laura Castell, Madeleine Forner, and Linda Balding.
Marc Renshaw, Arterial Jams, screenprint, 75.6 x 56cm. Photo: Belco Arts
Habitat is a strong and unusual exhibition that brings together the collective voice of artist printmakers who are concerned with the destruction taking place in our environment and comment on it through their art.
Jo Hollier Grassy, Woodlands, collagraph, 45 x 65cm. Photo: Belco Arts
Habitat is on display at the Belconnen Arts Centre, 118 Emu Bank, Belconnen, until 6 July. It’s open from Tuesday to Sunday, 10 am to 4 pm.
