Text Only Site

Things2c > art and culture > art prints

Print in the City of Fremantle Art Collection

The City of Fremantle Art Collection was forged from the creative economy and pragmatic arts culture associated with the Fremantle Arts Centre which opened in 1973 . The holding was developed in the early years, through the acquisition of artworks from Centre exhibition and artist in residence programs which supported emerging Western Australian artists, many of whom were beginning to make Fremantle their home . In later years, the Collection was to grow substantively and independently of the Centre; with development of policy guidelines and dedicated funding from the City.

Fremantle's print holding has of over 450 works, a quarter of which were acquired from the Shell Fremantle Print Award. In twenty - nine consecutive years (1976 - 2004) the Collection acquired forty - two Award winning prints and purchased another sixty-eight from the Award exhibition. Collectively these prints define the strength of the Collection holding, in representing examples of print by many leading national practitioners and demonstrating the considerable success by which the partnership with Shell Australia has fulfilled its original objectives and contributed to creating an Australian print holding of national significance .

The Print Award partnership was inaugurated in 1976 offering attractive prize money and an acquisitive award, where the winning print would be entered into the Collection. The Shell Fremantle Print Award was fundamental to the creation of a national focus for print in Western Australia and a mechanism by which to access Australian prints for potential acquisition by the Collection . The inaugural Award winner, despite a strong showing by well known interstate printmakers, was Perth artist Ray Beattie with his etching titled Aubergine still-life. Interestingly, similar well crafted prints were to win the Award for the next decade, indicative of the conservatism in Australian print culture at that time .

Although printmaking was an important media for many women artists, they remained underrepresented in the early Award exhibitions. This circumstance was highlighted in the 1980 Invitation Shell Print Award, conducted at the Fremantle Art Gallery, when only five of the nineteen selected national artists were women. Approximately half of the total number of Award winners are women, however the major prize was not awarded to a woman until the ninth year, when Monica Schmid won with her Untitled collagraph in 1984.

In addition to acquiring Award winning prints in the first eight years of the Award (1976 - 1983), the Collection's print holding, was enhanced further by the Australia Council and Shell making grants to the Centre for the purchase of prints . These funds, although modest by today's values, created an opportunity to rapidly grow the print holding at a time when the Collection had few resources and the Award was gaining prominence nationally. During this period the Collection purchased thirty - five prints by interstate and local printmakers including works by Peter Burgess, Geoff La Gerche, Basil Hadley, Bruno Leti, Guy Grey-Smith and Miriam Stannage .

It was in the following nine years of the Award (1984 - 1992) and in marked contrast to the earlier period, that the Centre purchased a single print. This hiatus is explained by the loss of Australia Council and Shell acquisition funds at a time when the Centre itself was setting new goals in its development of a state-wide program. A situation of diminishing resources was offset in the 1980's when the Collection gained Gift Deductibility Status from the Australian Tax Office and began to participate in the Cultural Gifts Program. Encouraged by the taxation benefit to the donor and growing reputation of the Collection's print holding, the Centre acquired examples of historical and contemporary prints and print folios by way of donation. It was at this time that the collection received 97 historical prints by donation; including 43 eighteenth and nineteenth century Japanese Ukiyo-e woodcut prints, twenty remarkable prints from the 1960's and 1970's by Colin Lanceley and Sidney Nolan, two very fine woodcuts by Noel Counihan and an etching titled Mother and Child by Brett Whiteley.

Individual artists have also donated prints to the Collection. In 1985 Alun Leach-Jones donated two screenprints titled Capricornia I & II, in the same year he won the Award with Capricornia lll and IV and again in 1987, donated a series of six linocuts titled Cypress and Arcadia Suite made at the Centre during his occupation of the print studio. Other important gifts include Dianne Longley's non-acquisitive Award winning artist's book, Night Sea Crossing, donated in 1994 and Jonathan Tse's gift of two screenprints in 2005. Acquisition of Australian print folios was critical to maintaining momentum for the Collection in the 1980's. Additions include the Art Centre's self published woodcut series by Guy Grey-Smith and the Praxis Folio of 1985, which included prints by Mary Moore, Helen Taylor, Brian McKay and Theo Koning . In 1988, the Collection received a significant boost with a copy of the commissioned Bicentennial Folio representing twenty - five high profile Australian artists. This valuable folio was produced by the National Gallery of Australia and donated to the Collection in recognition of its standing among print collecting organisations .

The City's print holding was well established by the late 1980's however, not until the 1990's, under the stewardship of Centre Manager June Moorhouse, did the City's Collection and in particular its print holding, undergo significant growth and begin to divine its own direction and identity. This development was underpinned by the appointment of the first Collection Curator and establishment of an acquisition budget at a time when the Award partnership was renegotiated to include a number of encouragement awards and a substantial increase in prize money.
The appointment of a Curator was a significant turning point in the Collection's fortunes and resulted in the development of an acquisition policy focused upon targeting Australian print artists not held in the Collection. Armed with a dedicated acquisitions budget the Collection was able to earnestly resume the purchase of prints from the Award, and actively identify prints in the commercial gallery sector and from national print organisations which represent trends in print media in Australia .

At this time a new home for the Collection was established at the Arts Centre known as the Kathleen O'Connor Gallery and an ambitious vision instigated the development of three touring print exhibitions to regional Western Australia and interstate venues . These touring exhibitions directly enhanced the reputation of the Collection, showcasing both the strength of the print holding and the Shell Fremantle Print Award to national audiences .

In 1993, following the renegotiation of the Award partnership the prize pool was increased to $7500 and in the coming years a number of specific prizes for innovation and new media were introduced . It was following these important initiatives that the number and quality of prints received by the Centre dramatically improved. This is evidenced by the prints received from leading national artists, Indigenous communities and experimental works employing book structures, digital media and industrial print technologies. In the last ten years, fourteen awards have been awarded to multiple sheet installations, digital prints or artist books involving a hybrid of media and digital technologies. Some of these include works by Heather Hesterman, Pat Brassington, Paul Brown, Raymond Arnold and Jan Davis. The Award winning work in 2003 was an extraordinary combination of print processes by Antonietta Corvino-Beehre tilted Studio D'una Citta which contributed to the growing number of artist books in the Collection. In the same period, the Collection was able to apply acquisition funds to the purchase of prints from the Award and in particular non-acquisitive Award winners and highly commended works. Twenty - five prints have been purchased from the Award since 1994. This group of works reflect the diversity, complexity and scale of print in Australia and include works by Susanna Castleden, Marieke Dench, Peggy Griffiths, Marian Manifold, Elizabeth Nyumi, Julia Silvester and Paul Uhlmann.

The winner of the 2004 Shell Fremantle Print Award was Peter Burgess for his elegant digital print, SURVEYING THE FIELD #1 vs.2. The timely inclusion of Burgess' recent work into the Collection suggests a suitable poetic finale to the Shell partnership, in drawing together the old with the new, by adding to the existing holding of Burgess prints purchased from the Award twenty-six years before .

Fremantle's print collection mirrors the shift which has occurred in print in Australia since the 1970's. The 'original' print is free from the confines of the single sheet and limitations of the traditional processes of the image-maker. Print media is now integrated in contemporary art practice; found upon three dimensional materials and located in space both real and virtual. Print media is presented in major exhibitions of contemporary art and is common choice for artists, when making works without limitation of scale and upon any conceivable material.

… print media and print processes are no longer relevant to the traditional printmaker alone, but rather, has become one of a number of legitimate strategies in art production. Print is a key ingredient to a culture universally driven by consumption of mass imagery and where digital reproducibility and virtuosity is mainstream .

The Shell Fremantle Print Award has over three decades assisted in the establishment of an important and representative Australian print collection in Fremantle. The challenge for the City of Fremantle Art Collection, in the absence of Shell's partnership with the Fremantle Arts Centre, is to continue to realistically develop this unique Collection and effectively enable in the future, public access to its holdings.

Andre Lipscombe
Curator

  1. The City of Fremantle Art Collection was established in 1958 with a donation by Claude Hotchin of 41 Australian paintings. He donated over 2000 paintings to 13 regional Councils and organisations. Fremantle Council received works by Margaret Preston, Kathleen O' Connor, Arthur Streeton, Albert Namatijra and others. See a detailed history of the City of Fremantle Collection at www.freofocus.com.au follow the links to Art and Culture.
  2. In the 1970’s Fremantle offered cheap rents, industrial spaces and attracted a wealth of talent which later fostered artist collectives and organisations like Nexus and Praxis.
  3. The Award was proposed in response to the growth in print in WA and revival of print in Australia in the 70's when migrant print teachers and artists returned to Australia from overseas (e.g. Edgar Karabanov and Brian Blanchflower in Perth and Colin Lanceley in Sydney), setting up of equipped studios in arts schools, use of printmaking in social action and protest movements combined with impact of ‘Print Survey’ exhibition at Art Gallery of NSW (1963) and establishment of Print Council of Australia (1966).
  4. The Award encouraged emerging printmakers in WA who were attracted to the relative low production costs of edition prints which were linked directly to multiplicity and transmission of images, promising a strategy for accessing the interstate art market.
  5. Printmaking was slow to overcome its historical associations with the so-called lesser practice of the graphic arts which were synonymous with print processes and print technology, rather than engaging contemporary practice.
  6. Acquisition funds of $500 were granted from the Australia Council in consecutive years 1976 and 1977 and the Shell Company contributed in 1978 and 1979, $250 and $500 respectively.
  7. During the first four years of Award the Centre focused upon supporting local practice by acquiring work of emerging printmakers like Mandy Browne, Mary Dortch, Ashley Jones, Cliff Jones, Bob Mandy and Helen Taylor.
  8. In 1976 the Fremantle Arts Centre published 8 woodcuts in an edition of 20, by Guy Grey-Smith and acquired a copy of the Praxis Folio, the organisations fundraiser representing the work of 4 prominent Fremantle printmakers.
  9. Commissioned by the Bicentennial Authority, an edition of eighty folios were printed at the Victorian Print Workshop by John Sloane and distributed by donation to museums in Europe, America, Asia and the pacific region, State and Regional galleries.
  10. City of Fremantle Art Collection, acquired over one hundred and fifty prints from selected commercial galleries, Australian Print Workshop and the Print Council of Australia, adding to the representation of Australian artists including works by Lesley Duxbury, Barbara Hanrahan, Laurel Nannup, Jan Senbergs, Holly Story, Judy Watson and folio of seven prints published by Australian Centre for Concrete Art AC4CA Public Projects 2002 -2004.
  11. The City's Art Collection was housed at the Centre's satellite venue, the Fremantle Art Gallery from 1978 - 1987. The Collection moved to a shop front Gallery space at 43 High Street, which closed in 1990, leaving the Collection without a home.
  12. Fremantle Arts Centre coordinated Ten years of the Shell Print Award 1986, a regional tour of Award winners in 1993 and a major exhibition Silkscreen to Computer Screen which toured nationally thirty - five Award winning prints in 1996-7.
  13. The Print Award responded to criticism of the exhibition being a reflection of the larger conservatism among printmakers by later supporting encouragement awards for innovative prints, Indigenous prints (1993) and artist books (1994), with the objective of supporting discourse concerned with explorative printmaking and recognition of collaborative projects, particularly with book binders.
  14. Three prints by Peter Burgess have been acquired from previous Shell Fremantle Print Awards in 1978 and 1979.
  15. Sasha Grishin, Australian Printmaking in the 1990's: Artist Printmakers 1990-1995, Craftman House, 1997, p9.