Reflections on The London Original Print Fair

Being an editorial intern at Print Quarterly has provided many roles, tasks and adventures for me so far. One of the latest has been helping out at The London Original Print Fair that was held at the RA this April. It takes place  once a year over a long weekend and provides the opportunity for many galleries to exhibit their best print works together. I had never attended a print fair before and although I enjoyed seeing such a variety of prints in one place, the amount of work on show was overwhelming. In between representing Print Quarterly at their stand, I did get a chance to have a look round. Some of my favourite pieces are below:

This square artwork by Rebecca Jewell, exhibited by Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery, was one of the most original contemporary treatments of prints I discovered at the fair. Each feather had a highly detailed and different type of owl printed onto it in relatively subtle colours that matched the naturalness of the material. I liked the way that this work seemed to be turning printing into a 3D object.

 

Andy Warhol’s ‘Souper Dress’ caught my eye due to the bold, contrasting colours and clarity of design. The humorous title also added to its appeal.

 

 

 

 

Investigating prints at the British Museum

As part of my internship with Print Quarterly, I was asked to go to the print study room at British Museum. This involved the exciting task of investigating a particular collection of nineteenth-century prints. I hadn’t been to this Museum since starting at UCL, (which is fairly shocking considering it is just round the corner), so this felt like a particularly creative reason and opportunity to go.

After making myself acceptable to enter the print room, (i.e. taking minimum ‘hand luggage’ – something I often struggle with! and remembering pencils over pens, along with no coats), I was promptly greeted by one of the print specialists asking what I would like to see. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I was definitely surprised when the catalogues I was after were found so quickly. Prints were stored in books, binding and catalogues that lined each of the walls and even remained impressive in the face of scaffolding currently dominating the room’s entrance.

The print study room was certainly austere; a very serious and strict place to study. Yet any sense of distance and restriction soon faded away when I saw the catalogues. I looked through eight stocky, and beautifully presented, catalogues to find out whether – and how – Chinese subjects had been represented within them. Only having seen nineteenth-century prints online, it felt wonderful to see the prints up close and in my own time. The careful details, not only of the political caricatures themselves, but in the calligraphic writing that decorated and informed their perimeters were beautifully crafted, and yet not always ‘perfect’, which added to the playful characters of the prints. This has to be the best experience I have had at the British Museum so far.

A detail from one of the prints in the collection