Hereford Museum & Art Gallery
15th March – 7th May 2008
ARTWEEKS
Christ Church Picture Gallery
17th May – 8th June 2008
OPC Wall Gallery
May 2008
Radley
7th September – 28th September 2008
(Date to be confirmed)
CONTEMPORY PRINTS AT SANDERS OF OXFORD
104 High St.,
Oxford
OX1 4BW
OXFORD PRINTMAKERS: EXHIBITION OF CONTEMPORARY PRINTS:
at the Jelly Leg'd Chicken Gallery,
Museum of Reading
Town Hall,
Blagrave St
Reading
OXFORD PRINTMAKERS EXHIBITION
at the Said Business School, Oxford
OXFORD PRINTMAKERS EXHIBITION
of original prints at
The Wall Gallery,
Oxford Printmakers,
Christadelphian Hall,
Tyndale Road,
Oxford OX4 1JL
The Christchurch Picture Gallery
Christchurch College
Oxford
In the 47 pieces in this 25th birthday exhibition, the artists have used both a wide range of subject matter and a wide range of techniques. The result is that the work on show will appeal to many audiences. It serves to illustrate what a broad church the techniques that comprise printmaking are.
Nicky Cooney has used a hand coloured collograph to make Let Fly the Birds. Here she frames her piece with a circular shape containing a mysterious tableau of three interlocked crowned figures each releasing a brace of white birds. In Fishboy, she places a cheeky face so that it peeps out from the fish's back, in an act of definite and defiant unity that sets this fish and his boy apart from mermen and from Jonah and his whale.
Both Sarah Downer and Shaun Goffe use screen-printing to produce vastly different results. In Pelican Starboard, Downer depicts a full-bellied, apologetic looking pelican, red in outline with feet and beak in pale green that seeps into a crisp white background. In Goffe's Silver Birch we see a foreground of birches in crimsons, bronzes, red and golds as if on fire, smoldering against a soft melting background of foggy cloudy grey. Catriona Brodribb's woodcut Fields Near Widdicombe creates a powerful atmospheric rolling landscape of hills, valleys and vistas, deep and dark in navy and royal blue, set against a slim white skyscape.
Betty Ebanja uses the more complicated techniques of collograph and viscosity to etch Rooms to Let. Collograph comes from the Greek colla, to glue, and graphos, to write. The technique involves the artist literally glueing together a wide range of materials in order to build up a textured plate from which to print. Once finished, the plate is varnished and, when dry, ink is applied to its surface and from this prints are made. The end result, in Rooms to Let, is a beautifully textured, flinty grey, three-storey town house that fills the entire picture. The door stands firmly closed; four of the five windows are curtained or occluded by plants, but behind the curtain in the fifth window hovers a shadowy figure.
All the prints on show are for sale and they are most reasonably priced. The exhibition continues until March 30.
Anne James
THE OXFORD TIMES
Friday 7 March 2003