Roslyn Kean, Ground Lines III 2025, US Hand printed woodcut on Japanese Kozo Paper 80.5x125cm
Congratulations to Sydney Printmakers member Roz Kean who has been selected finalist for the prestigous Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize 2025. https://www.ravenswoodartprize.com.au/
Exhibition of Finalists: 21 June- 6 July
Continuing with our series of interviews with artists exhibiting in Sydney Printmakers ‘To the Edges’ at Manly Art Gallery and Museum, we now talk to Rafael Butron.
How does your work address the theme ‘To the Edges’?
Recent unparalleled events Have caused many to live on the edge. The pandemic virus, caused by transmission from one person to another forced many of us into isolation quite rapidly, and for most people came fear and loneliness. Humans caused these events to unfold. The world’s temperature rises and our environment has been thrown. ‘Phases of Isolation‘ is a self portrait that explores three stages of separation, frustration, anxiety and depression. As we value our lives so should we also value the world we live in, by having compassion for one another and a duty of care for our world.
Can you describe the technical process you went through to achieve the finished work and what technical challenges you encountered along the way?
I usually engrave from a drawing on the plate itself using copperplate with a marker pen, then slowly engrave using an engraving tool called a Burin. The technical challenge is to remove all your training, which tends to make the print perfectly executed and use the innate artistic energy to achieve an image, much like action painting. My intention is to incorporate traditional printmaking techniques to create a unique work that has its own spirit.
What do you see as the role of Sydney Printmakers for the next 60 years?
Sydney Printmakers have and always will push printmaking to its limits and with every new member there is an opportunity to develop new engaging works that add to the diversity of the group and ensure its longevity for years to come.
How do you see the role of printmaking, in general, contributing to the conversation about contemporary art practice?
Printmaking has a role to play in contemporary art making as every printmaker has a unique approach to the creation of an image and the variety of mediums allows for an individual interpretation of the subject.
Rust, Blood, Gold and Cyanide
Woodcut, rust prints on kozo.
In 2019 I completed a short residency at Karangahake on the North Island of New Zealand. The ruins of the goldmine, especially the Victoria Battery (which processed the ore to enable extraction of gold) were like a grim monument to the labour of the many men and women who lived, worked and died there: the huge steel hoppers which once held the ore were now merely rusted remnants, and the grey concrete arches which once supported the cones now empty colonnades, and sudden shafts of bright light pierce the shattered roof of the building. The river below the Battery no longer runs blue with cyanide.
The local graveyards tell the stories of men killed in mine accidents.
Seong Cho Windy Hill
This work is entitled, ‘Windy Hill’ and is a woodblock print. It is an abstract expression of the movement of wind through the air and natural landscape. I produced this work during my time at the Art Print Residence in Spain in March 2020, while I was in isolation at the height of the coronavirus pandemic in Europe.
I was inspired to create this work by the strong spring winds as they moved through the grass and over the hills of Catalonia. The abstract shapes and lines in this work are also a metaphorical representation of life’s journey, where we are often swept up in events, ideas and experiences that are beyond our control, as if we are a leaf being blown along by the wind. Sometimes the metaphorical winds of life may take us to beautiful places, sometimes to dark crevasses or perhaps beyond the clouds, but the unexpected journey is what makes life worthwhile.
“Impact” explores personal emotive interpretations of the landscape affected by climate change. Within this work the impact of climate creates an awareness in which humanity must start noticing changes like fire storms resulting in a land ravaged by extremes. The cross in the center draws attention to the damage that occurs on the land. Many of my recent works examine these extreme weather events. The depiction of the landscape affected by changes to our climate draw on an expressive approach as the images rely on memory, experiences and recent events.
In 2020 fires raged through the Blue Mountains of NSW. The triptych Fire, smoke and ash was made in response to these events. In this relief print, iconic landforms – plateau, escarpment and valley – are subsumed and transformed by the effects of fire.
Landforms were created using the woodcut medium. The atmospheric effects of fire, smoke and ash were overprinted using pieces of etched and cut lino. A series of three prints was made.
Title: Fire, smoke and ash triptych
Medium: Relief print on three sheets of Rives BFK paper, 1/3series
Size: 99 x 186 cm
Year: 2020
Sydney Printmakers: Borderless. Megalo Print Gallery, 21 Wentworth Avenue, Kingston. Until November 2. megalo.org.
Printmaking is probably the most collaborative of all of the major art mediums. Shared facilities and shared expertise have characterised printmaking since its earliest days and many printmakers see themselves as part of an extended network of professional artists.
Roslyn Kean, Weaving Ancestral Voices II in Sydney Printmakers at Megalo. Picture: Supplied
In the almost 60 years of its existence, Sydney Printmakers has included most of the major printmakers of the time and the situation has not changed.
Today, there are about 60 members in Sydney Printmakers, 33 of whom are included in this exhibition. It is an exceptionally rich and diverse show with some brilliant work.
As a sweeping generalisation, Sydney printmaking, as epitomised here, is becoming far less new-media driven and more artists focus on analogue techniques. Woodcuts, linocuts, etchings plus the occasional screenprint hold sway, while digital and inkjet prints are the exception. It may be foolhardy to leap to conclusions on the basis of this exhibition, but it appears that digital technologies are being increasingly absorbed into the toolbox of Australian printmakers rather than being seen as an end product. Many may employ computers to formulate an image but employ traditional technologies to realise the final print.
The exhibition is dominated by some brilliant and ambitious woodcuts worked on a large scale by established masters, including Roslyn Kean, Susan Rushforth, Anthea Bosenberg, Angela Hayson and Helen Mueller. Rew Hanks is represented by one of his unbelievably detailed narrative linocuts, Josephine’s Ark (2019), while Graham Marchant’s linocut, The Cranford Rose Garden (2015-18), has an intriguing complexity produced through a deceptive simplicity of means.
Seraphina Martin, Finding solace in the land, 2019 in Sydney Printmakers at Megalo. Picture: Supplied
It is exciting how some of the “elders” of the printmaking tribe are branching out in new directions. Seraphina Martin’s Finding solace in the land (2019) is a light and highly evocative etching with watercolour, while Susan Baran’s huge tour de force Allure (2019) is a complex piece where she has collaged etchings and relief prints into a rippling, intricate composition.
One beauty of printmaking is its sense of intimacy through which it can convey an artist’s personality. Examples include the refined lyrical sensibility of Tanya Crothers’ collagraph Black Springs re-visited (2019), Wendy Stokes’ delicate Blended geographies (2019) combining relief, monoprint and stencil, Salvatore Gerardi’s striking Pervading memories: shadow lines (2019) or Andrew Totman’s spatially ambiguous floating monoprint, Touch (2018).
There are also some of the classics of Sydney printmaking, such as Barbara Davidson’s etching collagraph Voters and parliamentarians (2019) with its humour and brilliance of observation, and Bernhardine Mueller’s All the rivers run? (2018) with its dry humour and a created personal narrative.
Nina Juniper, Self supporting #1, 2019, in Sydney Printmakers at Megalo. Picture: Supplied
There is a strong, punchy inkjet print by Marta Romer, Borderless (2019) and a bold, inventive screenprint by Nina Juniper, Self supporting #1 (2019), that depicts a crumbling industrial site she has screenprinted on a block of concrete. Her print conveys a range of possible readings with effective humour.
This is an exciting, adventurous exhibition that demonstrates that printmaking in Sydney is in ascendancy.
Ruth Burgess organised two outings for Sydney Printmakers to the Art Gallery of New South Wales Study Room to view prints she had collected for the art gallery during her many trips to China. It was a very interesting and rewarding opportunity. Ruth told many stories about her escapades in China and showed us some extraordinary prints.
Ruth would like to remind us that the Study Room is a free service by the Art Gallery. You can book time in the Study room and request specific prints and the work of specific artists to be made available to you.
More information and booking details here.
Susan Rushforth and Roslyn Kean have made it through to the second round for this highly prestigious exhibition.