Unchartered Waters - Experimental Printmaking

A group of artists investigate new experimental forms of printmaking, which are today pushing the traditional boundaries of this technique in contemporary art. These include the usage of intaglio photopolymer, dry point, monotypes, monoprints, collagraphy, etching and collage, chine-collé.

In an ebullient moment, multi-talented printmaker Prue MacDougall decided to challenge a group of mainly painters to take up printmaking, and here under the banner of Unchartered Waters is the resulting works. Maybe it was beginner’s luck, the resulting show is quite impressive (from a painter’s perspective anyway!).

Having no formal training, or knowledge of the ‘rules’ can sometimes be an advantage. While crispness of edges and registration may be missing, what the artists did accomplish were ways of mixing things up, adding informal and non-traditional materials and substrates. Found items and gold leaf. Crayons and watercolour paints. Content reigned over meticulous finishing.

In addition to offering an evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages of each individual’s approach, the exhibition offers an insight into experimental content. Expression of dreams, or of political commentary, landscape impressions, along with themes of melancholy and beauty. Below is a note from each artist, offering a little more insight.

I inherited my father's penchant for maps, any maps, as he did from his father. I have 1950's and 1960's maps of many European cities as well as those more local. Using the old road maps of Auckland City, I have endeavoured to make commentary about high density planning and Council's prolonged and invasive reconstruction of our CBD. From my perspective, it hasn't been the improvement we were 'sold' or indeed anticipated. Overlaying a silhouette of the current Auckland skyline via a photopolymer plate onto old city streets offers a chance to contemplate opportunities we may have missed over the sixty years between. Linda Gair

I have always been fascinated by the idea of individuals and cultures reinventing themselves. My examination of objects questions what these fragments of material culture say about us, as we embrace, discard, and adapt them to make sense of our complex identities and place in the world. Ina Arraoui

Jo Dalgety is working with mono-printing and collage to begin a journey of exploration into the Hauraki Plains, her childhood home. The alluvial Hauraki Plains have been built up by sediment deposited by the Piako and Waihou rivers, which flow north to reach the sea at the Firth of Thames, and earlier by the ancestral Waikato River. The resulting land was flat, peat-heavy, and partly swampy. It has been converted from ‘virgin state’ into ‘prosperous’ land for dairy farming. Jo Dalgety

Unchartered Waters was a chance for me, a photographer, to explore a new artform and evolve my photographs with the medium of intaglio printmaking. Some prints in this show used photopolymer etching, whilst my mini-prints are hand-etched (using my own photographs for inspiration) and put through a tiny, 3D-printed press. As with my photography, my prints explore themes of melancholy and longing with an ethereal beauty. Charlotte Johnson

Printmaking has a long, rich history. The medium originated in China after the invention of paper in AD 105. Prints were initially exploited as a form of communication but were later elevated to the fine arts in part because of their unique technical qualities. These traditional techniques and skillsets still maintain a significant position in the art world and offer a foundation for contemporary artists to challenge their process and practice. The experimental prints in this exhibition combine time-tested printmaking techniques with innovative ideas.