Curated by Ross Woodrow, Ali Bezer and Blair Coffey
25 September – 16 November 2019 (Gympie Regional Art Gallery, QLD)
29 February - 10 May 2020 (Newcastle Art Gallery, NSW)
23 October – 28 of Nov 2020 (Logan Region Art Gallery, QLD)
Material prints are images or objects that have been created from a matrix by mechanical, chemical or electronic means and can be experienced as physical or material artefacts. The strategic inclusiveness of this broad definition positions traditional prints as part of a much larger constellation of printed images that extends well beyond the usual point of origin for printmaking in the fifteenth century when Gutenberg invented movable type and into the present or after the perceived terminating decline with the development of digital photography at the end of the twentieth century.
It is not only this expanded definition of printmaking that differentiates Stopping Time: Material Prints from 3000 BCE to Now from any other print exhibition yet mounted in Australia. The exhibition adopted a heterochronic view of time by bringing works together in thematic clusters, regardless of the period or place of production, collapsing temporal distance between them, and emphasizing the dual power of material prints to embed or carry past time, and to also stop time during our aesthetic engagement with them. This timeless encounter with material prints might be described as aesthetic time (see, Keith Moxey Visual Time: The Image in History) yet when artists attempt the synthetic transfer of ideas into matter and image it is more a process of collective cultural imagining and technological revelation rather than aestheticism. The full range of printmaking practices was represented, from ancient Mesopotamian images pressed in clay from cylinder seals to 3-D printed contemporary works. It included works from the Griffith University Art Museum, the Newcastle Art Gallery along with several private collections, and the addition of recent work by contemporary artists including:
Ali Bezer Blair Coffey Ryan Presley and Pamela See
1. Western Asiatic Neo-Sumerian Cylinder Seal for Temple Priest of King Shu-sin of Der Ur III, King Shu-sin, 1972-1964 BC (private collection)
2. Greek seal ring with horse 4th-1st century BC. (private collection)
3. William Blake (1757 - 1827) A family of New South Wales 1792 engraving [private collection, also in the NGV]
4. Ryan Presley detail of spear head (3-D printed stainless steel) an element from Warriorism 2014 (courtesy the artist, photo Carl Warner)
5. Gordon Bennett (1955 - 2014) Monkey Boy 2004 digital print {Griffith University Art Museum)
6. Albert Flamen (c. 1620 – after 1669) engraving from Devises et emblesmes d'amour 1653 [private collection, a 1672 edition from Duke Univ. Lib is available on THE INTERNET ARCHIVE]
7. Thea Proctor (1879 – 1966) The Rose 1927 hand-coloured woodcut [Newcastle Art Gallery, an extensive Bibliography for this work in exhibitions is available on the AGNSW website]
8 Hart, F. Bronze medal Hatted bust of Rubens 1840 (Commemorating Peter Paul Rubens Bicentennial Monument opening in Antwerp) private collection
9. Toni Robertson & Chips Mackinolty Daddy, what did YOU do in the nuclear war? 1977 [Griffith University Art Museum, also in the NGA Collection]
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