Biography

Printmaker, workshop manager and editioning printer at Greenworks Press, Victoria Australia

Abstract

ivision
This exhibition, comprising of works made by Kerry Spokes and Kate Zizys , was made using techniques which exist at the perimeters of traditional fine art printmaking processes. The cyanotype chemical print technique and i-phone technology bridge photo-process and printmaking developments throughout the 19th – 21st centuries: the cyanotype technique pre-dates wet photography as an image making process and iphone photo manipulation is at the very cutting edge of contemporary print practice. Through the creation of these works we have explored the boundaries and borders of print technique – those areas where the technological meets the traditional, where the constructed image meets the photographic image and where the analogue meets the digital. 

Thematically our work is positioned within the poetic and the political spheres and shares common ground in the use of experimental technique and collage as primary visual devises. Our work is figurative, sensual, grounded in world affairs and natural phenomena, we address the everyday in our visual analysis.

Illustrated Talk

Works of Protest
This paper explores the relationship between image making and activism looking at the small / free press movement in Australia, particularly in the 1970s and 80s focusing on the political poster as a printed art form. We will survey the productions and motivations of Australian artist-run print-based collectives, including Redback Graphix, Tin Sheds/Earthworks Poster Collective and others, with particular reference to the works of Chips Mackinolty, Marie McMahon and works made by Another Planet Posters.
Many of the works produced by these small presses where made quickly for immediate public consumption, and distributed via paste-ups, collective networks, activist distribution channels and student circulation. Many only survived this ephemeral presentation if they were souvenired into private collections. Some of the works, however, moved into public gallery collections and this paper considers the contemporary relevance of these works.
The paper describes how these printed works made by collectives peopled by writers, activists, anarchists and artists explored Indigenous land rights in particular, while also noting these small presses’ concerns and engagement with equal rights for women, public health, human rights and Australia’s position in the global community with regard to the proliferation of nuclear arms and uranium mining.