Art exhibition explores power of printmaking

Media release
27 June 2011

Art exhibition explores social, political power of printmaking

Art exhibition explores social, political power of printmaking

A forthcoming exhibition at The University of Auckland’s Gus Fisher Gallery highlights the power of printmaking as a medium for social and political critique and commentary.

Collateral, curated by the University’s Professor of Art History, Elizabeth Rankin, brings together four artists from the United States, New Zealand and South Africa. The printmakers’ works not only showcase the versatility of print processes, but also illustrate how printmaking can be a powerful tool for exposing human rights violations, world conflicts and global suffering—in other words, collateral damage.

Daniel Heyman (United States) was invited to witness interviews of Iraqi detainees by American human rights lawyers. He sought to restore the detainees’ individuality and dignity after endless and humiliating exposure as victims in the media. Heyman uses the directness of drypoint to capture likenesses of the men with rapid immediacy, adding the words of the detainees’ testament in inscriptions that invade the spaces around their heads.

Media reports also caught the attention of South African printmaker Diane Victor, who was outraged by the lack of attention given to public corruption and personal tragedies in post-apartheid South Africa. Her etchings reveal some of these “disasters of peace”, as she calls them, depicted in painstakingly delicate surfaces that compel viewers to linger over events that they might otherwise avoid.

Sandra Thomson (New Zealand) exploits the versatility of screenprinting to create linear forms reminiscent of medieval woodcuts in order to explore saintly stories and more contemporary incidents of suffering in the church. Working on fabric, she alternately evokes the sumptuousness of religious vestments and references more humble apparel, such as the singlets she creates to suggest the vulnerability of abused children.

Michael Reed (New Zealand) also uses fabric supports for many of his prints to convey a social imperative. He deploys the connotations of varied textiles – drapes, carpet runners, bandages – to contribute additional layers of meaning to the transfixing texts imprinted on his works, indicting those who make and sell arms for profit.

Professor Rankin says the four artists represented in Collateral all recognise that printmaking is a “medium of multiples”— a relatively inexpensive way to reach a large market and to deliver a powerful message.

“These printmakers do not take it upon themselves to provide answers to the questions they raise; rather they reveal what they have discovered...and allow it to speak for itself...Each plumbs the power of printmaking to express ideas that will stir a response in the viewer, and each develops a distinctive visual language enriched by the processes used,” Professor Rankin writes of the Collateral exhibition.

Collateral: Printmaking as social commentary runs 1 July – 20 August at the Gus Fisher Gallery (74 Shortland Street, Auckland). A speaker series that includes social, political and art commentators and educators will run concurrently with the exhibition. For information visit www.gusfishergallery.auckland.ac.nz

The University of Auckland’s National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries comprises the School of Architecture and Planning, Elam School of Fine Arts, the Centre for New Zealand Art Research and Discovery (CNZARD), the School of Music and the Dance Studies Programme.

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