Printmaking exhibit at Art Gallery of Ballarat

The exhibit A Guiding Hand: Prints and Directors 1967-2011 is showing at the Art Gallery of Ballarat until November 27. The exhibition was created in association with the IMPACT7 conference, which took place in late September at the University of Monash’s Caulfield campus.

The free exhibit looks at the contributions that five past directors made to the gallery’s print collection and how each helped it to grow. The directors discussed are James Mollison, Margaret MacKean, Robert Radford, Michael Rich and Gordon Morrison. Each made their own unique contributions to the overall look of the collection based on their own tastes and their different ideas on collecting; each director was free to reimagine the gallery collection in their own way.

A catalog is created for each and every exhibit presented at the Art Gallery of Ballarat and this is no exception; each catalog printing is generously illustrated and contains information about every piece of work featured in the exhibits.

This particular exhibit includes a variety of prints; colonial era prints, relief prints from the 1920s and 30s and posters. It also presents information on the various print processes using original printing blocks and printing artefacts from the gallery.

Visiting this exhibit will give you a good understanding how printmaking has changed throughout the years and how tastes and fashions in the art world are constantly changing. What is seen today as a great work of art will not necessarily be viewed that way in the future; visiting exhibits like this allow you to understand the past and help you to appreciate the present.