Heartbeat of the industry - Print 21 magazine article

Ask any group of people involved in the printing industry to discuss creativity and the chances are that you will get some very different answers, says Simon Enticknap. Some will see it in terms of finding new markets and products, others as a means of implementing new business practices; there is recognition, too, of the immense creativity at the heart of many of the technological changes driving the industry.

Underpinning all the responses, however, is the sense that creativity is indeed vital for the printing industry and that a strong creative heartbeat is what drives much of its activity. In that respect, printing is different from other manufacturing industries where the focus is simply on making a product rather than fulfilling a vision.

Of course, printing today is also about making a product and finding a market, but in the process we should recognise what makes that product unique, desirable and valuable. In this issue, we celebrate creativity in its various forms and acknowledge the skill and dedication of award-winning printers who demonstrate everything is distinctive and original about the print medium.

Many hands make great work
One of the more unusual gold medal winning entries at this year's National Print Awards was for a series of work unlike anything else seen in the competition. And while it may seem to emanate from a world far away from the day-to-day output of commercial print, its production highlights what is so challenging and rewarding about the process of putting ink on paper.

The winning entry was in the limited edition category and was for a series of prints produced by the Australian Print Workshop (APW) in Melbourne to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the Dutch ship, Duyfken, on Australia's shores in 1606. As regular readers of Print 21 culture will know (see Print Culture, June 2007), the Duyfken or Little Dove was the first recorded instance of a European ship reaching mainland Australia. Captain Willem Janszoon, the Dutch skipper, sailed down the west coast of Cape York, making the first, brief contact with the local Aboriginal people of the area and producing the first known map of the coastline. In graphic terms, this is where it all began for modern Australia, the first 'inkling' of the nation we know today appearing as a line drawn on paper.

Recognising this unique moment in history, the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands commissioned the Australian Print Workshop to produce a limited edition portfolio of prints by 10 Indigenous artists who took as their theme 'first encounters'. In July 2006, all the artists travelled to Melbourne, some from Cape York but also from Arnhem Land, Melville Island, Western Australian and Tasmania, to work with the printmakers at APW and produce the limited edition portfolio.

Each artist created their own response to the Duyfken encounter, not as paintings or drawings which are then printed as reproductions but working directly in the print medium. These works were then printed up as 50 boxed sets, entitled Duyfken, which have since been purchased by leading galleries around the world including the British Museum in London, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Seattle Art Museum in the US as well as the National Library of Australia. In print terms, this is about as prestigious as it gets, acknowledged worldwide as a significant artistic achievement.

The 10 prints in the Duyfken portfolio are a mix of different methods and techniques, each chosen to suit the particular artistic vision of the artist involved. There are linocuts, lithographs, etchings from copper plates, even a print from a CTP aluminium plate with an image developed in Photoshop. In most cases, the artists drew directly onto the metal plate or lino block using age-old techniques, quite a challenge for artists more used to working directly onto paper or canvas, particularly for those whose work involved two or more colours.

Anne Virgo, APW director, says the project was a huge undertaking for the workshop, not just working with so many different artists and ensuring that each was allowed to find expression for their artistic vision but also, technically, having to actually produce the prints. It might seem remarkable to many in the industry that a print run of 500 (or even 10 runs of 50) with most of the impressions being three colours or less should be regarded as a mammoth job, but it says a lot about the process of actually creating and printing work by hand. Equally though, while it might seem as though it comes from a different age and practice entirely, the work of the APW and the modern commercial industry still share a strong bond, as was recognised by the judges of the National Print Awards.

The silence of the stones
The first thing you notice about the APW print room in the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy is the sound. There isn't any. For anybody used to hearing the rumble of the press or the hum of the digital printer, the APW studio is notable for its lack of any mechanical or electronic background noise. That's because the type of printing that goes on here is still done the way it was for hundreds of years before the advent of powered machinery - by hand. That's not to say there aren't machines here. There's an old Albion press, for instance, of the type usually found in museums but here still in working order. Perhaps the most modern piece of printing gear is an FAG cylinder proofing press - one of the best of its kind ever made - used for offset litho printing with aluminium plates, one colour at a time.

APW also has a large collection of litho stones, the limestone blocks that first enabled the development of lithography and now becoming increasingly rare. According to Anne Virgo, many of the stones came from the former Victorian Government Printer in the 80s, some quite small but others among the largest still being used (apparently another stone arrived with the front page of an old Argus newspaper, Melbourne's daily until 1957, still visible on it).

As a finite resource, the choice and use of a stone is critical and gives added significance to each print produced from one. The process of drawing directly onto the stone necessarily means that when the image is erased, part of the stone goes with it. Over time, the stones become thinner and thinner until, at some point, they need to be reinforced. Eventually, the stones will be printed out of existence and that will be the end of traditional limestone lithography, the root of today's modern industry.

Established in 1981, the APW provides a range of activities all related to the world of printmaking. Apart from exhibiting works in its own gallery and curating exhibitions at venues around the world, it works co-operatively with artists who want to explore the print medium, the results of which are clearly visible on the walls of the studio and offices with a 'who's who' of contemporary Australian artists on display. Some of this work, produced in collaboration with APW printers such as senior printer Martin King, is incredibly detailed and finely-drawn, all the more remarkable for having all been done by hand.

APW, a non-profit organisation, also runs printmaking classes and summer schools for people wanting to find out more about the process, and operates an Open Access Studio where artists can come and use the facilities to produce their own work. These artists use a wide range of different print methods but the emphasis they all share is the focus on doing it by hand, from creating the image, engraving or etching the surface, inking and printing the sheets - it's a laborious process and a reminder of how far commercial print has travelled from its roots. In the commercial print world, the main drivers are faster turnarounds, every quicker make-readies and increasing use of colour; in the world of printmaking, patience is a virtue and expanding the colour gamut (or even printing CMYK) is not a concern. And while commercial print aims for a global standard, printmaking continues to explore a process in which every impression is different.

And yet the fundamental process - the transfer of ink to a substrate via a plate of some kind - remains the same. It's still all about defining the image and non-image areas and controlling what happens when all the different elements - ink, paper and plate - interact. It's remarkable, too, to consider how far these processes as demonstrated by today's industrial print production have progressed in just a few generations from the types of hand-crafted techniques that the APW still practises.

Distant relations
Despite their common heritage, printing and printmaking maintain a somewhat distant relationship. It's a fact acknowledged by Anne Virgo who says that the APW didn't really know what to expect when it entered the National Print Awards because the commercial printing industry is such alien territory for artists and printmakers. Equally, there are probably many highly-qualified printers out there with no experience of creating an image on a plate and inking it up by hand.

And yet there are links there. One of the major supporters of the APW as a non-profit organisation is the Collie Trust, well-known throughout the industry for its support of educational and training programs such as travel scholarships. At APW, the Collie Trust supports an annual printmaking fellowship to enable an established artist to spend time in the workshop, producing new work and extending their knowledge of printmaking.

Anne Virgo and the APW are certainly keen to establish new relationships with the commercial print world, whether it is printers who want to find out more about the manual process of printing or companies and trade bodies that might be interested in using the facilities as a venue or simply coming along to find out more about what the workshop does. It's a terrific resource and one which anybody with an interest in putting ink on paper is sure to find it a fascinating experience: www.australianprintworkshop.com