studio research is now documented on a the web site printculture@qca
studio research contributing to printculture@qca in 2021
In the final exhibition of his PhD candidature held at QCA galleries Abraham Ambo Garcia presented the studio research outcomes of his investigations into the identity of “the Filipino in trans-local and trans-national spaces as twin spectres that present themselves as grappling with disruptions, trying to belong and ever unfinished of becoming. Oases explores and revisits the ideas of being a Filipino that signify leaving and living home. Garcia’s studio research through the Santa Rosa Project makes him a participant with the everyday and celebratory gatherings of the FilOz”.
digital prints on vinyl
decennium
ten years of the Iain Turnbull memorial Award
showing at Grey Street Gallery, Queensland College of Art
29th September - 9th October 2021
“decennium showcases work by recipients of the Iain Turnbull Memorial Award, a benefaction that has just notched up its 10th year. The Award was established in 2011 by the Turnbull family to honour the memory of Iain Andrew Turnbull (1965–2009), who graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art with first-class Honours from the Queensland College of Art (QCA), Griffith University, in 2004. The formal inauguration of the Iain Turnbull Memorial Award in 2011 established the “spirit and intent” of the Award, listing a broad range of criteria for consideration by a selection panel, … that “on occasion may result in selections that are at first glance surprising or even at times provocative.”
Professor Ross Woodrow.
Nicola Hooper 2020
Ana Paula Estrada 2019
Matthew Newkirk 2018
David Jones 2017
Grace Collinson 2016
Jude Roberts 2015
Tim Mosely 2014
Paul Eves 2013
Elyse Taylor 2012
Liana Evans & Jessica Row 2011
What mean ye by these stones?, Jude Roberts, Lithograph, 2021
PhD candidate Matt Newkirk showed new work at his solo exhibition Total Sellout at QCA’s Grey Street Gallery August 23- 28th August. Supported by an artists talk on the 28th the show presents work investigating the commodification of art with contemporary society.
Vol 15, #2 of the journal The Blue Notebook is now available from the book art website at the Centre For Fine Print Research UK. This volume contains five essays from the Arlis ANZ and abbe 2020 conference reimagining the material: artists’ books, printed matter, digital transformation, engagement. The essays were selected by peer review following the conference and will be complimented by another five in the following volume of the Blue Notebook.
essays by - Marian Crawford
The Archaic Stillness of the Book
Paul Uhlmann
Artists’ Books: Objects of Visible and Invisible Realms
Dr Caren Florance
Augmented Materiality, Lost Reality
Ana Paula Estrada
The Art of Making Books during the Times of Social Distancing
& Angie Butler
Evidence of Making: a haptic enquiry into letterpress printed artist-publishing practice
making paper / making art
contemporary artists engaging critical issues
through papermaking
Gympie Regional Gallery, June - July 2021.
Over the last few decades and in keeping with the re-materialisation of art a growing body of artists have found paper and papermaking an effective medium to articulate conceptual concerns. This return to materiality within contemporary art practice has reactivated the conversations between artists and their mediums and is particularly evident within the medium of paper, a medium that historically has been relegated to the role of a substrate both in the broader public and within art practice.
This exhibition celebrates and documents an emerging community of contemporary artists based in Queensland and Northern NSW addressing contemporary issues through the properties of paper itself.
exhibiting artists, Grace Cuell, Ana Paula Estrada, Fiona Foley, Annique Goldenberg, Sidonie Hall-Jordan, Tim Mosely, JungHa Park, Pamela See & Karen Stone
DVA candidate Annique Goldenberg exhibited In the spirit of exuberant chaos and fluctuation at the exhibition Speaking with the River, at the Northern Rivers Community Gallery Ballina, 2021 with LabX, a research group in the School of Arts and Social Sciences, at Southern Cross University.
“Unique and delicately balanced ecosystems, swamps are intimately linked to rivers. These complex systems in their naturally evolved form have the capacity to reduce the impact of flooding, mitigate drought, clean polluted water, control erosion, and provide shelter for fish stocks, animals, insects, and plants. In balance with human needs, they can provide food and water for livestock and be places of recreation and wonder.” These 48 sheets of handmade paper were made slowly in response to the irrevocable damage of our impact on the ecosystems of the Tuckean swamp in the Northern Rivers, NSW.
a gaggle of lithographers meeting at QCA’s print studios, Chris Hagen, Dian Darmansjah and Jude Roberts, haggling over a LO-SHU wash on a stone.
Phd candidate Matt Newkirk’s recent body of work was selected for the onespace exhibition DEPART, curated by Taylor Hall and held over Dec 2020 and Jan 2021.. “DEPART offers a timely platform to engage with our individual and collective experience by asking its artists the question on everyone’s lips, how do we begin to respond to this unique year? The exhibition enters 2021 with volatile hindsight, tender reflection and a cautious sense of optimism for the future”
abbe 2020 artists book - under covid social distance guidelines
abbe 2020 was held in partnership with Arlis ANZ during November 2020 under covid social distancing guidelines. The event was very successful for both communities involved, librarian and artists books. Papers addressing artists books practice delivered at the conference are being published over two volumes of the Blue notebook in 2021.
The difficult year that was 2020 ended in even more tumult at Griffith University’s Queensland College of Art. Griffith’s response to the covid pandemic included plans to close QCA’s Print and Jewellery & Small Objects programs and studios as well as its Bachelor of Photography. Once the plans were made public Brisbane’s creative community reacted very strongly mounting a campaign against the planned closures and launching a petition that attracted over 11,500 signatures in three weeks from creative communities around the globe. A volume of the signatures was presented to Griffith University’s Vice Chancellor that combined with hundreds of letters of support from galleries, academics, peak bodies and artists across Australia effected a change in Griffiths planned closures. The Print and Jewellery & Small Objects programs and studios were retained at QCA. Out of this tumult the Print program and studios are now carving out a new path within the covid landscape of tertairy education in Australia,
print culture at qca continues.
Pamela See’s Mackay & Michael Phillips Between earth, four views
In a great showing of HDR candidates from QCA at Artspace Mackay’s 2020 Libris Awards, Pamela See has been awarded the Regional Artists’ Book Award for Mackay, and Michael Phillips has been awarded the Tertiary Artists’ Book Award for
Between earth, four views.
QCA’s own print whisperer, Ross Woodrow, speaking to his curation of the exhibition, Stopping Time: Material Prints from 3000 BCE to Now. The expansive exhibition embraces the printed mark from Sumerian cylinder Seals to 3D digital prints. Shown in Gympie Regional Gallery late 2019, the exhibition will tour to the Newcastle Art Gallery, The Logan Regional Art Gallery and the Grafton Regional Gallery.
clockwise from the left - Rhiannon Daniels
Paulo Silveira
Marian Crawford
Jennifer Batt
Angie Butler
Sarah Bodman
Tom Sowden
Amir Brito Cador
& TIm Mosely,
dicuss the artsists books symposium ‘Artists’ Books in Australia, Brazil and the UK – looking to the past to read into the future’.
held Friday 26th October 2018
hosted by the Centre for Fine Print Research, Bristol, UK.
HDR student Ana Paula Estrada de Isolbi has been awarded the AAANZ 2017 best artists book prize for her book Memorandum
... dc3p is a contemporary fine art publishing project framed within print culture and haptic aesthetics. The venture supports studio research into artists books practice, autographic printmaking and hand papermaking, and is an active element of print culture @ qca (Queensland College of Art)
printculture@qca responds to the critical discourse that now actively informs and shapes the medium of print within contemporary art practice.
As an academic field print culture embraces the production, distribution, reception and evaluation of the printed mark, both image and text. This includes contemporary artists’ employment of prints and print practices.
The 1990’s held considerable scrutiny for academic printmaking communities across the globe. Criticism, such as Australia’s Charles Green made in his 1992 essay Art as printmaking: The deterritorialised print, over the “empty shells” of traditional conventions held by printmakers who “have often resisted realignment of the discourse of printmaking in order to conform to the demands of connoisseurship and the museum” questioned the broad crediblity of the discipline as a fine art medium at that time. The response to that criticism, while measured, has developed a formidable momentum. Prints and print practices are now understood as a discipline with a unique vocabulary that artists are articulately employing to critically engage contemporay issues and discourse.
The success of contemporary print practices is made evident in research centres, events and publications such as; the Centre for Fine Print Research (CFPR), Philagrafika 2010, The IMPACT conferences, Philagrafika’s Working States Project, the journals Art in Print and the Blue Notebook and texts such as Ruth Pelzer-Montada’s Perspectives on contemporary printmaking: Critical writing since 1986. Within this response the relationship between fine art practice and print culture, (an academic discipline in its own right) is attracting increasing attention, providing more surfaces and textures over which the critical discourse can move.
Print culture @ Quensland College of Art is a recent iteration of the printmaking program taught at QCA. The range of autographic printmaking techniques that QCA’s printmaking studios are nationally recognised for continue to play a primary role in the print culture being fostered at QCA. These include the foundational techniques of Relief, Intaglio, Lithography and Silk Screening. The studios also support Artists Books, Papermaking and a diverse engagement with Digital technologies such as Laser Engraving.
significant investigations in studio techniques,
pulp printing - & fine papermaking techniques
artists book practices
leterpress wood type
Another vital aspect of QCA’s print culture are the higher degree research students working in the print studios. The diversity and intensity of their studio research generate a strong dynamic at QCA.
