Title

Contemporary Australian printmaking: More than just technique.

Author

Butler, Roger

Source

[Not applicable]

Publication date

1982

Type

Conference paper

Language

English

Country of context

Australia

Full text

Contemporary Australian printmaking: more than just technique.
by Roger Butler


The beginning of the Second World War effectively brought to a close the first boom in Australian artists’ prints. In 1938 the Australian Painter Etchers Society, whose principal members were conservative etchers concerned primarily with technique, held its last exhibition. This ended the society’s 17 years of dominating the subject and style of ‘serious’ prints. Their nostalgic images of Australian landscapes and picturesque old houses no longer appealed to a society moving into a modern age. On the other hand, the light hearted decorative modernism of artists working in the ‘alternative’ techniques of wood and linocuts, seemed equally inappropriate to a world at war.

Of course printmaking did survive; Margaret Preston continued to bend different techniques to her needs, and Noel Counihan produced some of his most political work immediately after the war.

It was in post-war Melbourne that a new generation of printmakers first emerged. From 1951 till 1961 Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) made its printroom, which came under the commercial art department, available to artists one night per week. In this ten year period most Melbourne artists used the facilities. Chief amongst these were Tate Adams, Charles Blackman, Arthur Boyd, Leonard French and Fred Williams. Swinburne Technical College introduced a similar scheme in 1954; John Brack, Janet Dawson, Franz Kempf and John Olsen using its presses.
Most of these artists were painters who were already on the way to developing their mature style, and they approached printmaking as an extension of their art. Their sense of excitement and co-operation was not hampered by the rather rudimentary equipment they had at their disposal.

A large touring exhibition, the Australian Print Survey 1963, was the culmination of these explorative years. Organised by Daniel Thomas for the Art Gallery of New South Wales, it was seen by both artists and the public as the official acceptance of printmaking by the art and also collecting world.

Exhibition groups were formed (Melbourne Prints 1960; Studio One, Melbourne 1961; Sydney Printmakers 1960; Adelaide Print Group 1961) print galleries and workshops established (Gallery A printworkshop 1962-64; Workshop Arts Centre, Sydney 1962; Crossley Gallery est, 1966). In 1966 the Print Council of Australia was formed, its aim was “to consolidate [and] to stimulate further [printmaking] activities and to encourage understanding and appreciation of the original print”. This included the dubious task of defining what an original print might be.

Popularization of the medium resulted in most art schools establishing or refurbishing print workshops and developing diploma courses. From the late 1960s this gave rise to a generation of students trained exclusively as printmakers, and whose work displayed little but the technical skills of their craft.

This was due primarily to the nature of their training. The revival of Bauhaus ideas in the 1950s was particularly strong in Melbourne, RMIT being run on oversimplified Bauhaus principles. “Form follows function” and “truth to materials” were popular catch phrases at the time. Contemporary Japanese prints and exhibitions by European printmakers who immigrated to Australia during the 1950s seemed to share these premises. Another strong technical influence came from Earle Backen who had studied at Hayter’s workshop in Paris. American formalist and Pop art ideas also stressed perfection of execution.

As a result of these factors most prints from the 1960s till the present look like either watered-down remnants of 1950s European expressionism or bland derivatives of American Hard-edge or Pop. Either way they are characterised by a flashy display of technique. To a public unschooled in art appreciation the simple doctrine equating technical virtuosity with artistic excellence seemed irresistible.

There are of course many exceptions to this sweeping generalisation. One only has to look at the work of Fred Williams or Bruce Latimer. However it has been printmakers informed by political issues, either personal or of the world at large, that have revitalized printmaking. Their prints display only the degree of finish necessary to convey their intentions.

Bea Maddock observes the calamities of life through an existentialist screen. Her prints can be viewed on numerous levels. Technically brilliant, No-where takes advantage of the host of innovations available to contemporary etchers. Printed from two plates the image combines photoetching, aquatint and hand burnishing and is printed with a light plate tone. Secondly it can be seen as a disquieting narrative. Survivors of the Titanic wait in their life boat for the help that came too late. Above them, the message that was never picked up. The radio operator on the nearby ship was asleep. At its most abstract it is a commentary on the mediation of images and messages. Maddock’s influence has been enormous. Among her former students are Albert Shomaly, Sally L’Estrange, Deborah Walker and Nick Nedelkopoulos.

Shomaly bathes in the narcissistic splendor of his own sexuality, the print being conceived and executed at a commercial printery in the hey-day of the Gay Liberation movement. Many elements of dissent are etched into the highly worked plates of Nedelkopoulos — alias Nick Paradise. However there is a simple optimism in his series The distance between smiles, a title that may be a wry reflection on his tram driving days in Melbourne. Brought up in Altona, an industrial western suburb of Melbourne, he combines elements of this new promised land with a distinctly Greek vision.

In Image 4, men arranged on clouds like the heavenly host, silently celebrate as one of their numbers blissfully falls from grace past a vista of suburban streets and oil tanks. Another fallen angel on a cloud below weeps while she reads and contemplates the loss of ‘goodwill to all men’.

The preciousness of the fine art print is deliberately subverted by Sally L’Estrange. The etching plate is uneven, the edges eroded by acid. Below the image she scrawls in pink texta the prosaic newspaper caption, but the crudeness of look belies a mastery of technique. It parallels the baseness of war, waged with sophisticated weaponry.

The graffiti-like directness of Deborah Walker’s print Night time is achieved by drypoint, a process requiring little technical knowledge or equipment. This makes it an appropriate medium of expression for painters such as Ross Gash and Kevin Lincoln who occasionally make prints.

With the exception of Noel Counihan, Australian printmakers from the l950s till the 1970s tended to ignore political and social issues. One of the few responses to the horrors of the Vietnam war was The Broadsheet produced in Melbourne by artists and writers. Although in poster format, it masqueraded as ‘fine art’ and was sold in a limited edition.

Screenprinting had been used regularly for ‘fine art’ printmaking in Australia since the early 1960s, but few artists had taken advantage of its full potential; the ability to produce at a low cost, with little equipment, in unlimited numbers, multicoloured prints.

From the mid 1960s in England the ‘beautiful people’, ‘flower children’ of the pop music, drug-taking, drop out counter-culture had adopted a decadent graphic style derived from Alphonse Mucha, Aubrey Beardsley, Art Nouveau and the Symbolists. These underground graphics were popularised by magazines such as Yarrow Roots and the Australian-produced 0Z. But it was the psychedelic poster, often printed in luminous colours on reflective paper that became the main vehicle for this ‘mind expanding’ art. In San Francisco a similar style had taken root by 1967. Convoluted lettering in colours such as cherry and purple meandered almost indecipherably across posters glorifying such cult figures as Che Guevara, Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix.

All these influences are seen in the screenprinted posters produced by Earthworks Poster Collective which was formed by Colin Little at the Tin Sheds, University of Sydney in 1972.

Although the collective’s early work adopted a decorative look it was always more concerned with social issues.

In Australia, alternative life-styles based on cooperation, self-sufficiency and responsibility for one’s actions had been galvanised by the Vietnam war, The promised ‘Age of Aquarius’ enshrined by the Australian Union of Students in the Nimbin Festival 1972, failed to eventuate and after the dramatic sacking of the Whitlam Government student and social groups worked with renewed energy.

From 1975 the Earthworks Poster Collective became more blatantly political, and until its demise in 1979 produced posters for almost all alternative and left wing political movements in Sydney. Its name is particularly linked with women’s rights, gay liberation, Aboriginal, land rights and the anti-nuclear movement.

When the Earthworks Collective disbanded in 1979 its members dispersed across the country. Colin Little helped set up Megalo Screenprintinq Collective in Canberra; Michael Callaghan established a screenprintinq workshop at Griffith University in Queensland and later commenced Redback Graphix in Wollongong; Ray Young worked with Tiwi Designs, Bathurst Island and Chips Mackinolty is presently working with Aboriginals in Katherine, Northern Territory. Toni Robertson left for Adelaide where she worked with the already well-established political poster makers in that city before coming to Canberra.

The Women’s Movement has given rise to several of its own collectives; Matilda Graphics operates from Sydney and the newly formed Jill Posters from Melbourne.

The future direction of these poster/printmakers is various. Some artists will continue to he involved with political and community oriented poster workshops. Others such as Mandy Martin aims to subvert the conservative nature of the print world from within. Her limited editioned prints, sold through commercial galleries, present factories, not a subject usually associated with precious prints. Julia Church, on the other hand, screenprints her personal mythologies in unlimited editions that are destined for the street rather than gallery walls.

Unfortunately, print curators, collectors, galleries and societies continue to perpetuate a technique oriented approach to printmaking. At present one is often asked “Is this a good print?”. I look forward to the day when I am asked “Is this print a good work of art?”

© Roger Butler, 1982.
Paper presented at the Australian Art History Association Conference, 1982.

Last Updated

09 Oct 2020