EUROPEAN LARGE-FORMAT PRINTMAKING

ed. Andrew Folan; essay by Gerry Walker

ISBN 978 0946641 208     68 pages (paperback)    56 illus (13 colour)

Featuring work by 58 contemporary Irish and international artists, this book documents an exhibition in which the Black Church Print Studio invited printmakers from every EU country to exhibit their work alongside that of selected Irish printmakers. In his essay, Gerry Walker discusses the position of graphic expression among other media, such as sculpture and painting, and notes the significance of the establishment of the European Biennale for Graphic Art and its contributions to explorations on the nature of European identity. The book also includes brief biographies on each of the artists, a background to the Black Church Print Studios, and an invaluable, well-written guide to printmaking terms and methods.

EXTRACT

"Black Church Studio, in launching its European Large Format Printmaking Exhibition, seeks to show common cause with the Biennale ideal. As a contribution to the European City of Culture 1991 the studio invited artists from each of the EC countries to exhibit their work alongside the work of selected Irish artists. The main purpose of the exhibition is to promote a greater awareness and understanding of printmaking and to encourage the questioning of attitudes to the graphic media as a whole, among artists and the general public. Of particular interest to the studio is the desire to assert the viability of large-format printmaking and to emphasise its equal importance to painting and sculpture in major group exhibitions. For too long, it is believed, printmaking has been unable to transcend its craft origins and has limited itself to a fairly modest scale. This exhibition seeks to challenge that point of view and hopes to provide artists with an opportunity to actively confront the conceptual implications and the technical demands of working to a large format."

— from the introduction by Gerry Walker