INK: Public Archive - Five Decades of Printmaking at the Glasgow Print Studio

Selected by AHM

Sam Ainsley
David Harding
Alexander Moffat

INK: Public Archive brings together 56 works by 52 artists from Glasgow Print Studio's extensive archive of over 1500 prints made by artists since the founding of the Studio in 1972.

Works range from some of the earliest prints by John Bellany, John Byrne and Philip Reeves to more recent prints by artists such as Elizabeth Blackadder, Jim Lambie and Christine Borland.

The works have been selected by AHM (Sam Ainsley, David Harding, Sandy Moffat) at the invitation of John MacKechnie the director of GPS. Ross Sinclair has written of Ainsley, Harding and Moffat: they "…have been instrumental in the development of the culture of art born in Glasgow and exported around the world for over 25 years. Put simply - the very idea of Glasgow as a new and vibrant centre for visual art would not exist on the scale or depth without their sustained efforts over a lifetime."

The resulting exhibition demonstrates the full range of printmaking techniques, from older methods such as woodcut, etching, drypoint, mezzotint, collagraph, to lithography, and onwards to screenprint, photo etching and digital imaging. While definitions of ‘what is a print’ may have changed in recent years, the arrival of new methods and digital techniques have not made woodcut or etching redundant, but have simply extended the options available for the artist/printmaker. As Jacki Parry has said, "If you can ink it you can print it."