Name

Zero Print Workshop.

Other names

PRINTWORKSHOP ZERO

Culture

Australian

Type

Organisation

Start date

1973

Start place

rear 68 Oxford Street, Darlinghurst, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia View on map Close map

Occupations

Gallery director | Print workshop

Summary

Located: Australia (NSW). Etchings

Context

Australia

See also

Max MILLER, George SCHWARZ, Rose VICKERS;

Biography

A cluster of workshops was established in Sydney before 1980. Zero Print Workshop was the first. Initiated by George Schwarz, Max Miller and Rose Vickers, it received funding from the Visual Arts Board in 1973 and 1974. The aim of the workshop was to provide a space for its three practising artists, access to other printmakers for a fee and the editioning of works for other artists. It was equipped with a Hunter Penrose etching press, an Albion platen press, a lithographic press and a screenprinting table and there was also a small darkroom to facilitate photo-printmaking processes. In 1974 Zero moved to larger premises in Miller Street, North Sydney, and was renamed the Miller Street Print Workshop; soon after it began its association with Port Jackson Press. In November 1975 David Rankin helped establish the publishing and editioning potential of the studio. The first publication was a portfolio of six etchings, ‘Edge of the Void’ by John Olsen.

Two years later, in September 1977, the success of this strategy could be assessed when Exhibition of two years’work by Port Jackson Press, publishers of prints opened at Barry Stern Gallery in Paddington. Works by younger artists as diverse as David Aspden, Fred Cress, Victor Majzner, John Olsen, Brett Whiteley, Keith Looby and John Peart shared the walls with older established artists like Lloyd Rees. Port Jackson Press editioned some of the plates Rees had etched in the 1930s and commissioned a number of new works, including the series Memories of Europe and Australian landscape: A portfolio of soft ground etchings 1976. They were also responsible for publishing his later lithographs where Sydney Harbour dissolves into tonal abstraction.

Over the years printers who worked at Miller Street Print Workshop set up their own workshops producing work for Port Jackson Press and others. Diana Davidson and James Whitington established Whaling Road Studio in North Sydney in 1978; later Whitington set up his own Crown Street Press. [Roger Butler, Printed images by Australian artists 1942-2020, Canberra: NGA, 2021].

Last Updated

13 Dec 2022