The RBSA is proud to present the 2024 Print Prize Exhibition. First held in 2004, the biennial RBSA Print Prize is a celebration of printmaking in all its forms. Featuring 90 works from 74 artists, this exhibition showcases the best of contemporary printmaking with the inclusion of both established and emerging artists. A wide range of styles, techniques, and practices are on display, including wood engraving, screenprinting, lithography, etching, monotypes, photogravure, cyanotypes, and more.
This year’s exhibition was selected by:
Ros Ford RE RWA, painter and printmaker, member of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers, London, RWA Academician
Jenny Mason-Gunning, specialist printmaker at Ironbridge Printmakers
Laura J. Onions, lecturer in Fine Art at Wolverhampton School of Art, specialising in printmaking
Following the opening of our Print Prize 2024 Exhibition on Thursday 29 February, we are pleased to announce the Prize Winners!
Please see the selected works below.
GMC Trust First Prize, £1000:
Dominica Harrison, Black Rock, 2022, Etching with Aquatint on Copper Plate and Animation
Dominica is an award winning international artist currently based in UK. She works across the mediums of animation, printmaking, performance and installation. Her previous work have explored themes of connectivity and the subconscious, often through a poetic, abstract approach to storytelling; allowing it to be accessible to the wider audience. Black Rock is investigating themes of alchemical transformation, ritualistic practice and prayer in the context of modern western society. Displayed is a volcanic landscape that originated in the authors subconsciousness in a form of a dream. This surreal terrain represents limbo, with the sanctity of the birth-cave and the black waters of death and rebirth. The moving installation includes 1min HD looped video Black Rock and the original intaglio print.
Judges Comments: A subtle etching taking into account the ritualistic aspects of printmaking, demonstrating originality in its exploration of visual storytelling in combination with animation, bringing the print alive in a new way.
GMC Trust Second Prize, £500:
Peg Morris, Colekitchen Lane, 2022, Etching
Peg Morris explores dilapidation, decay, solitude, erosion and changing light conditions; processes which transform our surroundings. Fascinated by process, Peg uses different media; drawing, painting, etching, collagraphy, monotype, lithography and artist’s books. Her work is rooted in observation and drawing underpins all the images she makes. The places depicted in her work, whether interior or exterior, are quiet and contemplative; the composition leading the viewer through the space.
Judges Comments: Delicate detail, excellent aquatint, because lines and perfectly wiped and printed. Very well presented. We would love to see more work by this exceptional printmaker.
Judd Medical Third Prize, £250:
Francesca Centioni, Vol 25, 2023, Polymer Gravure
London-based artist practitioner Francesca Centioni believes in encapsulating her philosophy through maintaining a sense of freedom. Her practice is based on the use of printmaking and experimental processes. She often links themes of ecology, identity and more specifically the interrelationship between reality and the imagined. Francesca’s work investigates the potential that can be experienced through extending dialogues and accidental discovery. Her poetic and often instinctual approach allows the work to act as fleeting encounters and found thoughts.
Judges Comments: Presentation is beautifully thought out giving a very grand look. This piece shows a different look at print – using a different surface to print on is pushing print out of its normal comfort zone. We loved this piece.
Student Prize, £250:
Chi Park, Swordfight, 2023, Etching
Chi is an artist from South Korea based in London. They mainly draw inspiration from everyday life, capturing and transforming ordinary moments into creative opportunities. In their studio practice, Chi explores the possibilities of the imagination and memory. It is where they infuse observation with wit, crafting a playful perspective on both fiction and reality, such as the streets of 90s Korea or a whimsical journey through a desert in the trail of a snail. Using various materials such as pens, pencils, pastels, and paint, Chi creates vibrant and dynamic pieces that evoke the essence of moments.
Judges Comments: The title of this piece depicts the image very well and the dark tones are excellent. A very intriguing piece. A lovely print that deserves the student prize.
Printmaking Today Editorial Prize selected by Leonie Bradley, Editor of Printmaking Today:
Caroline Macdonald, Arcadians, 2023, Digital prints and Japanese paper folded
Arcadians (2023) is about different systems that play out over time. Caroline’s work often pairs objects and stories from antiquity with current ideas on colonial injustice and climate breakdown. According to Greek mythology, Arcadia was a virgin wilderness home to the god of the forest. She has situated the ‘Arcadians’ (photographed fragments of the Parthenon Marbles from the British Museum) in Arcadia. Re imaging their physical boundaries as porous and interconnected with the flora.
Caroline uses marbling and glitches in her work taking advantage of chance marks and creating disruption to an ordered system. She hopes in this way to be able to suggest new meanings. In technology, the glitch is an error which reveals the fallibility of a system. Similarly, global heating could be seen as a glitch which reveals the failure of capitalism. The digital glitch in her work is a disruptive patterning lending surfaces a resistance to easy translation or categorisation, inviting readings around uncertainty and occlusion. The error or glitch wanders in – between the edges of the system – evading categorisation, and in this way can resist and regenerate the system from within.
Judges Comments: Caroline’s expanded print sculptures embody layers of history and geology in a very contemporary approach.
Highly Commended:
Hammer Chen, Whole Submission:
Hammer Chen’s work is informed by the idea of memory, traveling, arousing a nostalgic sense through cinematic imagery. She explored the transformation from objective records to subjective perceptions, through the manipulation of photography on a printmaking matrix. She transitions between photography, etching and stop-motion animation. Her images are not only from a lived reality, but also resemblance rebuilt from collective memories. Hammer started from a photographic archive or subjects she is repeatedly drawn to —the light in the dark, the potential interaction of characters. Her works could be regarded as an ongoing stage, the connected disconnection. The setting is open to interpretation, there is tension or expectation, the anticipation of what is about to happen.
Precious Fragments, 2023, Copper Photogravure and Chine Colle
Transition, 2023, Copper Photogravure and Chine Colle
Transmission of Light, 2023, Photopolymer
Judges Comments: Beautiful tones in this solar plate photogravure print. Using her own Aquatint Screen Hammer created this very detailed beautiful print. Working very large for this medium the result is brilliant! Excellent blacks as well!
Georgia Green, Whole Submission:
Since graduating with a BA in Fine Art: Painting and Printmaking from Glasgow School of Art in 2018, Georgia has championed sustainable printmaking processes such as silkscreen and risography, a mechanised form of stencil printing with a more climate conscious appeal than its traditional or digital counterparts. As a printmaker, Georgia uses her art to unravel the interiors she moves through and lives within. She dissolves and dramatises everyday rooms and corridors, questioning notions of intimacy, belonging and confinement through the glaze of domesticity. Enclosed by these scenes Georgia is drawn into the warmth of her childhood; filling empty rooms with colourful figures and animals she collects from children’s books, novels, poetry, films and dreams. In these painterly reveries memories and imagination start to overlap playfully, illuminating the chimerical tangle of curiosity and longing that prompts each artwork.
Kettle’s Yard, 2022, Screenprint
Judges Comments: A beautiful aura created in the stunning print. The atmosphere created here is very effective! A piece that one would look at and say… How did the printmaker create that effect?
Orlando, 2023, Risograph Print
Kevin Jordanus, Your Daily Mundane Everything, 2022, Intaglio
Realising that our memories are partial/fragmented in nature, Kevin Jordanus tries to summarise such nature in a body of work that features memories from his closest people, friends, and even strangers. This is an effort to reconstruct a composition derived from pictures and photos he received from those people. In line with this idea, Jordanus also believes that people’s memories about things are plural and varied depending on each person, in parallel to the nature of printmaking.
Judges comments: We thought this series of work is very clever. The consistency of the line and aquatint throughout all the plates are pretty impressive. The storytelling theme is excellent are the intricacies of the mark making.
Lindsey Moran, Whole Submission:
Lindsey has a keen interest in the relationship between printmaking and photography. Her work explores the impact of light in both architectural and organic contexts; whilst being created by a process that is itself dependent on light exposure. Lindsey works predominantly with photopolymer etching plates which allow her to produce textures and detail with continuous tones and rich blacks. Lindsey has a work space at Hub Studios in the Baltic Triangle area Liverpool. She has exhibited widely; highlights include the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, the Royal West of England Academy Open Exhibition, Global Print Biennial Douro, Portugal and Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair.
Grow with Grace, 2023, Photogravure
Stairs – Kew Gardens, 2022, Photogravure
Judges comments: A very clever piece of work – from taking the original photo thought to the editing, making the plate and inking and printing. This is an exceptional piece of work.
Julia Timmins, Precious, 2022, Wood Engraving
Julia Timmins was born in Wolverhampton and now lives in rural Shropshire, she trained as a jeweller and worked as a jewellery designer and production director in the Birmingham Jewellery Quarter. She uses the skills and attention to detail developed by working with jewellery in her wood engravings. Julia is fascinated by the often-exquisite craftsmanship and design of everyday antique items, the keys and locks in this image aren’t based on actual objects but are more an amalgamation of the inspiration she has found. It is intriguing to wonder what these locks are protecting, with the maze-like composition adding another level of curiosity. A visit to the wonderful Locksmiths House in Willenhall, with its historical connections to her family, initially inspired this engraving.
Judges Comments:
Jenny Mason-Gunning: Incredible attention to detail, if you get in close to this one you can really see how much work has gone into it. The engraving in superb and the print shows a brilliant cover of black relief ink that sits so perfectly on the paper.
James Turner, Linton, 2023, Screenprint
James Turner is a Birmingham-based artist, printmaker, lecturer, and technician. He established Stirchley Printworks in 2022, a traditional printmaking studio located in south Birmingham. Linton is part of a series of screen prints that documents the work of Brian Turner Trimmings Ltd., James’s father’s business, and one of the last trimmings manufacturers in the UK. Through these prints, viewers gain insight into the craftsmanship of the company’s creations, demonstrating a steadfast dedication to preserving and celebrating traditional art forms.
Judges Comments:
Jenny Mason-Gunning: Technically flawless, the attentiveness to the subjects craft is clear. The back story of this one is very lovely to read. The pallet is very good as well as the overall presentation of this work.
You can visit the Print Prize 2024 exhibition till Saturday 6 April.
Join some of the exhibiting artists for a guided tour of the exhibition from 2pm on Saturday 9 March.
An exhibition catalogue featuring all the works in the exhibition is now available both in-store and online.
