Exhibition dates Tuesday 18 MAY – Saturday 5 JUNE 2010

Opening 6pm Thursday 20 May - All Welcome.

Opening Speaker Professor Sasha Grishin AM, FAHA

The Megalo Printmaker in Residence program continues to be a core activity which stimulates, invigorates and reinvents printmaking as a contemporary art practice.

The  program broadens the base of Megalo’s activities and is a key platform in our audience development. Resident artists promote the studios with the subsequent development of their work, and often, through high profile exhibition opportunities. Members and the Canberra community gain benefit from being exposed to new techniques, concepts, networks and opportunities from working alongside artists recognised as being pre-eminent printmakers.

The residency attracts a broad range of artists working across all printmedia. The program is highly competitive and increasingly gaining an international reputation which ensures Megalo’s place in a global network of printmaking organisations.

Rose Montebello
The aim of my residency at Megalo was to investigate ways to incorporate screen-printing and various mediums and inks on to the surface of digital prints which were to be cut and constructed into paper based assemblages. I wanted to experiment with screen prints on paper, and to re-familiarise myself with the use of Photoshop, dot screens, four colour separation, the use of alternative mediums for printing, and the application of other materials to the surface of the paper including glitter. During the residency period I was able to explore all of these areas and put them into practice in the development of both a small suite of prints on paper and an assemblage piece, which included screen printing.

The prints on paper used found images from nature books as a starting point. I specifically chose close-cropped portraits of animals baring teeth - for example a monkey screaming or tiger snarling. I dissected the image into background, mid ground and foreground using Photoshop and then experimented with printing these sections back into a whole image. The beginning image for the assemblage work is a collaged digital print of a volcano plume. I have printed directly onto the surface of this with pearlescent pigment and medium to adhere glitter and graphite powder to specific areas.

AG Stokes
My introduction to lithography was through a weekend workshop at Megalo in 2007. The six-week residency in 2009 provided a great opportunity for a sustained period of work where I could tackle some of the problems I had encountered in the preceding two years and try some new things. My aim was to use a variety of drawing materials on the stone, experiment with different transfer methods, use more than one stone in a single print and produce an image stable enough for editioning.

Reflecting on my own experience as a gardener, I took as my theme the continued, if embattled existence of the suburban garden. I wished to explore the backyard as a microcosmic world with shadows as well as light, where the gardener is both creator and custodian and where, despite disappointments, every spring heralds new beginnings.

I made a series of small works where the idea of an enclosed space is conveyed through a blend of representation and abstraction within a square format. Winding lines and circular forms exemplify the creativity, hope and energy of the printer-gardener.

Amy Kerr
During my residency I designed and created a typographic series of hand-printed fabric lengths and tea towels to explore the way that we recognise letters and how our recognition is affected by patterning.

‘Typography as pattern’ is an interest that I developed throughout my time at university. The study of letterforms and their visual arrangement has been influenced by time spent in Japan and has grown out of my graphic and textile design experience. My fascination with typography and patterning is the concept behind this body of work.

Each pattern in this series was created entirely from only one character - either a letter from the alphabet or a hiragana character (the first Japanese alphabet). The fabric lengths utilised precise repeat patterning and were printed on natural fibres including organic cotton, recycled hemp and bamboo. I printed 55 metres of fabric and 80 tea towels in total and cannot wait to get back to the print table again!

Bayu Widodo
Bayu Widodo uses printmaking as a way of communicating urban issues which impact on people in Yogyakarta, Bayu's home, in Indonesia as well as in Australia. Bayu works as a solo artist and a member of Taring Padi, a collective of artists who explore contemporary social and political issues. Bayu produced several prints during his residency, some of which were purchased by the National Gallery of Australia. The screen-prints are strong visual exposes of urban life made compelling through a sensitive aesthetic combined with dynamic draughtsmanship. The prints address themes of corporate greed, poverty, housing issues and and the position of the ordinary man in a voracious world.

Rebecca Mayo
In this work I am building 'family mistletoes' as an alternative model to the family tree. Informed by the work of ecologist Prof David M Watson, I am interested in Australian Mistletoe and the pivotal role it holds within its natural habitats. Historically, Australian Mistletoe has been largely ignored or regarded as a menace to the trees it inhabits. However, contemporary ecological engagements with mistletoe suggest a different picture. Mistletoe has been identified as a 'keystone' plant, reflecting, rather than being the cause of, either a healthy or a disturbed eco-system.

With this in mind, my 'family mistletoes' explore how gender relations are reflected in historical knowledge. Like mistletoe, women are keystones, vital for the formation of the family tree, yet historically represented as incidental, perhaps even as parasites.  Using dye extracted from the leaves of mistletoe to print with, and through the construction of garments, I recount six generations of women, each of whom make up this ‘family mistletoe’. I have reinstated the women along with the mistletoe, as the central protagonists in this story.

Geoff FarqUhar-Still
The work in this residents’ show relates to a previous exhibition held at Megalo in 2008, entitled Red Hot Conformist. The titles of the works examine our relationship to western consumerism in which everything becomes a product to be consumed or used. Advertising and media of all kinds sends the message that everything is there for the taking and that nothing is out of bounds. This unconstrained condition creates a context where an end point is very much in sight, yet conveniently ignored.

This body of work is an attempt to expose this ignored notion by reversing the digitisation involved in their making. In taking advertising images, pulling them apart systematically and applying the hand and eye to their translation into real world things, full of flaws and misalignments, some sense of the tangible object re-emerges.