Curated by Catherine Wood, a new exhibition at the Orchard Gallery in Waterloo presents a selection of works created in recent printmaking workshops at the South Sydney Uniting Church led by Hayley Megan French and Margaret Vazey.
Presstagram comprises more than 30 works, mostly lino and monoprints of various sizes. The Opening on Saturday August 17 attracted a crowd of 40 or so – some workshop participants as well as neighbours and friends. The show was opened by artist Jovana Terzic.
The exhibition was not part of initial gallery plans for 2013, but the quality of the work so impressed Catherine Wood she was inspired to make a selection and offer to curate the show.
“I liked the atmosphere of engagement and experimentation at the workshops. In this age of fabricated art, the individual, handcrafted feel of the work produced emphasises the value of the human touch, and the surprise of the unintentioned result,” Catherine Wood said.
Parish minister and art enthusiast, Andrew Collis, said the workshops were a lot of fun. “We bought this little hand press and we just kept making more and more prints – using black, red and blue ink, on white, brown and newspaper, on corrugated cardboard. It’s a very freeing activity – there’s no limit to the ways you can make an image. It’s fun to experiment with multiple prints, to apply the ink in different ways, to print from different surfaces.”
Jovana Terzic acknowledged an ancient desire for printmaking: “From the ancient handprints in the rocks, left by the Aboriginal people as a reminder that we are all just visiting this beautiful Earth, to a more contemporary example of a child leaving its footprint in fresh concrete on the sidewalk, people seem forever amazed by their own stamps.”
“Some will leave prints of their bodies, others will leave prints of their souls,” she said.
