Tweed Gallery etching a place as print making champion

03 November 2016

Susi Muddiman addresses conference on print making’s future

Tweed Regional Gallery and Margaret Olley Art Centre has been held up as a champion of print making, at a time when the art form’s relevance and future is coming under the microscope.

Gallery Director Susi Muddiman was a speaker at last month’s Hungry Eyes Print Symposium at the Art Gallery NSW, which was held to explore what the future might holder for printmakers and their creations.

The symposium was told Australian museums and galleries feature some extraordinary and rich print collections. Prints had been seen as accessible, fresh and even radical.

However, some print study rooms are closing and prints were being integrated into mainstream collections as collectors and museums expanded their collections to include new media such as digital works.

Susi told the symposium the frequency of print exhibitions at Tweed Regional Gallery and its approach to telling stories – about the works, the printing method and the artist – were the keys to engaging audiences and fostering the art form.

She received enthusiastic applause when she declared that since 2012 the Gallery had hosted 22 exhibitions that were either exclusively prints or included prints.

She said the mystery of prints – the methods used to produce them – could be either the most exciting them about them or a barrier to audiences understanding and appreciating them.

But she said Australian audiences were generally keen to learn about those processes and were more likely to engage with a work if the artist’s ‘voice’ and their stories were incorporated into the exhibition.

“I still have so many people asking about how prints are made – and ultimately I think that is extremely healthy,” Susi said.

“The most compelling artefacts that have defined history have been made by artists … and ultimately I think the best galleries and museums tell stories.

“It’s a 21st Century approach to enliven social history by using the voice of the artist.”

She said printmakers had been particularly effective in capturing images that tell stories.