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7th RWA Open Print Exhibition
Press Release

9th August – 19th September 2009

Peter FordMasako SeoAlexander Kizilov

From left to right
Peter Ford RWA Culinaria (detail) collagraph 25 x 35cm
Masako Seo Deep Forest woodcut 85 x 60cm
Alexander Kizilov Ragtime I (detail) etching & aquatint 56 x 99.5cm



Recent artworks from Russia, Poland, China and Japan will be some of the internationally works in the new print exhibition, opening at the RWA, in its fine building on Queens Road.

This will be the 7th Open print exhibition in a series, which began in 1989. The previous one in 2004, also curated by Peter Ford RWA, received the accolade of ‘exhibition of the year’ from Bristol’s Venue magazine. The 2004 exhibition featured spectral figures apparently floating in space at the end of the main gallery. The creator of that work, Marilene Oliver, is exhibiting again with another mysterious work, called Dervishes. This typifies the expansion of printmaking away from two-dimensions, one of the themes of this exhibition together with a blurring of boundaries between traditional processes and new media.

Linking with an innovation at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in London this year, is the inclusion of animated printworks (shown as short films). The young Polish artist, Katarzyna Kijek, will present her work ‘Fleisch’ (Meat) where ‘you are what you eat’ is made manifest. Another animation, from Natalia Lamanova in Moscow, cleverly combines pastiche postage stamps, formation dancing and references to heroic elements in twentieth century Soviet art.

Use of traditional processes does not mean there are no surprises or innovations in that area. The exhibition will include one of the largest wood engravings ever made – over two metres in width. This has come from Professor Keisei Kobayashi, resident in Tokyo, who is one of the outstanding engravers of our time.

The 7th Open Print Exhibition will be selected, from the many hundreds of works submitted in the middle of July, by a panel of artists, lecturers and collectors. Further details will be available nearer this time regarding the final selection of the show.

The international focus coincides, in the final week, with the 6th IMPACT conference on contemporary international printmaking, organised by UWE, and artists, academics and students from Europe, America and beyond, will be in attendance.

For further information and images please contact Fiona Davies, Education and Marketing Manager.

e. fiona.davies@rwa.org.uk
t. 0117 9735129
w. www.rwa.org.uk