Convergent: the Hybrid Print

“Printmaking has long since emancipated itself from the motivation upon which its development was initially based: the simple desire to reproduce visual material. Between tradition and experiment, it has acquired its own claim to originality, thus launching a far more fundamental debate on the multiplication potential of the print and overturning the one-sided relationship between original and reproduction.”

Annemarie Bucher, “WHY MAKE PRINTS, Printmaking isn Switzerland since 1960: Artists, Printers, Publishers’ Page 10, Pro Helvetica, 1998

“Convergent: the Hybrid Print” is stretching the parameters of printmaking. Within this exhibition the artists investigate differing notions of hybridity within the printmaking spectrum. Encompassing surface investigations and borrowing print media from a variety of tangents. It is the third hybrid printmaking exhibition incarnation that the core of this group has exhibited in since 2020.

Akin to its title we are moving toward a common point or a way of thinking and working. Convergent (kənˈvɜːdʒənt ) is an adjective. 1. (of two or more lines, paths, etc) moving towards or meeting at some common point 2. (of forces, ideas, etc) tending towards the same result; merging 3. mathematics(of an infinite series) having a finite limit.

The artists selected for Convergent were born out of the previous two and fluidly this group has evolved just as our studio practices have. All artists here are multi-disciplinary; question and expand how we see print media within the contemporary art realm. The work selected here by no means defining the complete breadth of the practice, it is merely a sprinkle. At the outset of the Covid19 pandemic in 2020 three of the selected artists were included in Let all the birds fly: the hybrid print curated by Therese Kenyon and Patricia Wilson- Adams exhibited at Maitland Regional Art Gallery (MRAG). The MRAG exhibition went into physical suspension shortly after its opening and had the opportunity to progress as an online exhibit. The second Covid lockdown provided an opportunity to develop for the second and more recent exhibition in Kandos with the Cementa Gallery WayOut Art Space. With a different group of print artists invited to take part, many with regional connections and works that reflected the new location. WayOut: with Print became an offshoot of the MRAG Exhibition and it drew from the essence of the first exhibition becoming more organically expanded to include regional and environmental concerns. This third exhibition has evolved again. Selected because of their multi-disciplinary studio practices, with printmaking as well as other media, each artist in this exhibition has a solid background within the tradition of editioning prints and has the ability to work within the canon of those traditions.

What is important within Convergent is that the artists expand, stretch and disrupt how we traditionally see printmaking, experimenting and questioning those studio-based traditions. The work here isn’t concerned with tradition; instead the artists expand our preconceived perceptions of the contemporary printmaking spectrum. The “Convergent: the Hybrid Print” artists are part of a growing evolution of print based media globally and within Australia who extend the parameters of traditional handmade print media.