While prints about Australia have been made since before white settlement and prints in Australia have been made from the early years of European settlement in Sydney and Hobart, serious interest in collecting Australian prints has been a relatively recent phenomenon.
Although the early Painter-Etchers Society, with its finely crafted etchings and wood engravings by artists such as Lionel Lindsay, Hans Heysen and Sydney Long, fostered a certain market for prints in the 1920s and the colourful woodblocks by artists including Margaret Preston and Thea Proctor had a presence in the following decade, prints did not make a bid for centre stage on the Australian art scene until the 1960s. It was then that prints attracted many of the big-name artists, major print exhibitions were held at state galleries, the Print Council of Australia was founded and a small dedicated print gallery opened in Melbourne. By the late 1970s some of this enthusiasm had waned and it has only been over the past decade that there has been a renewed and major interest in the collecting of Australian prints.
Presently there are more than a dozen commercial art galleries and print workshops whose major focus is dealing in Australian prints and triple that number of galleries, custom printmaking workshops (frequently attached to universities) and independent and community printmaking outlets which market original Australian prints. The secondary Australian print market is smaller, but thriving, with the Joseph Lebovic Gallery in Sydney the best established print gallery. Most art auction houses handle a fair number of prints, particularly by the big-name artists, including Brett Whiteley, Sidney Nolan, Fred Williams, John Brack and Arthur Boyd. How big is the Australian print market? It is difficult to arrive at even a credible estimate. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander print market is huge and rapidly growing, with an estimated annual turnover of about $5 million, about a quarter of the sales going to overseas collectors. Non-indigenous printmakers, both in the primary and secondary art markets, sell about $7 million worth of prints annually, although some estimates are substantially higher. As a conservative estimate, we can say that today we have an expanding Australian print market worth about $12 million annually. While the great majority of prints are bought from galleries and print workshops, the relative inexpensive unit cost and ease of transport has seen a huge increase in internet sales. The Australian Art Print Network sells about 15 per cent of its prints over the web, while the Port Jackson Press has seen its internet sales rise dramatically from 1 per cent three years ago to between 5-7 per cent of total turnover presently. In 2007 it intends to introduce an 'e-commerce' component to its website to enable people to buy online and arrange delivery.
The collecting and sale of prints has always been mired in controversy over the technical definition of what constitutes an 'original print'. On one level, it is not difficult to draw a line of demarcation between an original print and a reproduction. In a classical definition, a reproduction pre-supposes that something exists to be reproduced. So while a painting or drawing exists, it can always be reproduced again, usually with improved technologies, hence a reproduction has no special value, even when produced in a signed limited edition. With an original print, be it an etching, a relief print, lithograph, engraving or executed in any other medium including digital technologies, nothing exists until a matrix has been created and the plate, block or stone has been printed.
Sadly in practice, many prominent artists have had their paintings reproduced through printmaking technologies and have had these signed reproductions marketed inappropriately as 'original prints', hence debasing the currency of printmaking. Fortunately the art collecting public is becoming increasingly well informed about what constitutes an original etching, lithograph, screenprint or relief print, and overpriced reproductions are becoming more of an embarrassment to their owners than a prudent investment.
I asked about 20 of the most important dedicated print outlets about what they thought were some of the major changes in the practice of collecting and selling prints over the past five years. Most pointed to an emergence of a new class of informed collectors who are buying prints not primarily as a surrogate for the more expensive paintings, but as artworks in their own right. Jane Whiting from the Impressions on Paper Gallery in Canberra observes: "Most of these people prefer prints to paintings, not just because they are less expensive, but they have a different appeal".
For virtually all galleries and print workshops the internet has become a crucial marketing tool as a way of communicating information about new prints. Possibly what is changing the face of Australian printmaking more than anything else is the eruption in the scale and variety of indigenous printmaking. Basil Hall Editions, Northern Editions, Bachelor College, Red Hand and Australian Print Workshop, among others, have run workshops and training programs so that presently about 25 Aboriginal communities have bought presses and make their own prints on paper and fabrics. These include Tiwi Designs, Munupi Arts & Crafts, Jilamara Arts & Crafts, Buku Larrngay in Yirrkala, Injalak Arts and Maningrida Arts & Culture all in the Top End, while there are also presses at Indulkana, Fregon, Ernabella and Blackstone in Central Australia. The Australian Art Print Network in Sydney, established in 1996, markets much of this work from the Australian Art Centres to various commercial art galleries, as well as publishing some editions, and arranging national and international touring exhibitions, all of which raises the profile of indigenous printmaking. The vibrancy, visual immediacy and affordability of many of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prints has in many instances led to people in Australia and abroad buying their first print and becoming print collectors. Some galleries abroad, including Arts d'Australie in Paris, now specialise in Australian indigenous and non-indigenous prints.
The lure of prints for many a first-time art collector lies initially in their financial accessibility, where a person can acquire an attractive original artwork for less than $200. As James Makin from Port Jackson Press in Melbourne says: "What I really love about printmaking is that it is the most egalitarian of all art - everyone can be a collector."
Frequently, once hooked, print collectors become obsessive, and boxed portfolios are popular acquisitions (particularly when wall space runs out), suggesting that prints are collected for private contemplation, rather than for display. When viewed unglazed and close up, linocuts and woodcuts, etchings, aquatints and drypoints, lithographs and screenprints have their own and unique sense of magic, a viewing sensation quite different from looking at paintings or even drawings. It is not unusual for addicted collectors to have assembled several hundred prints. Prints are also popular with interior designers, architects and with the more upmarket hotels. For example, Port Jackson Press has supplied a considerable number of prints for The Park Hyatt Melbourne and The Westin Sydney.
Increasingly, prints are being bought for investment, quite often as self-managed superannuation funds or through companies such as Art Equity and United Galleries. Some of these come from a wine investment background and have become important players in the placement of investment art. Australian prints are still ridiculously underpriced when compared with the international print market, where individual modern prints have penetrated the $1 million mark and it is not unusual for contemporary American, French, Italian, German, Chinese and Japanese printmakers to achieve tens of thousands of dollars per print on the primary market.
Visually literate people realise that some Australian prints are of outstanding quality and are advising their clients to be on the ground floor when the inevitable rapid market commodification of prints occurs. Astute investors aware that Australian prints are inexpensive and easy to store have recently been noticeable in the market place. A Rover Thomas print marketed in 1998 for $750 fetched $10,000 at a recent Sotheby's auction; Brett Whiteley prints frequently achieve up to $12,000 at auction and prices are rising steeply for good prints by John Olsen, John Coburn and Garry Shead. Also, vintage prints by artists like Margaret Preston and Norman Lindsay have
become exceptionally expensive on the secondary market.
Who are the printmakers popular with Australian print collectors? Responses from the major galleries dealing with
prints suggest that there is no dominant pattern, but at least in the non-indigenous primary market, people are buying the work of artists who are primarily known as printmakers, as opposed to the secondary market, where most attention rests with the big-name artists who also make prints. Penny Gebhardt of the Australian Galleries: Works on Paper in Melbourne lists as their most popular printmakers Rosalind Atkins, Monique Auricchio, Deborah Williams, Geoffrey Ricardo, John Wolseley, G.W. Bot and David Band. Noreen Grahame of Grahame Galleries + Editions in Brisbane notes that "one of the major developments in recent years is the number of younger, very fine printmakers that galleries like mine are able to represent. More often people are not
speaking of 'prints' but of etchings, lithographs, et cetera, and are likely to refer to prints as 'works of art'." The artists who are popular with her clients she nominates as Michael Schlitz, Judy Watson, Ron McBurnie, Nicolas Goodwolf, G.W. Bot and Hertha Kluge-Pott. Galerie Dusseldorf in Perth, which in profile has moved away from an almost exclusive preoccupation with limited-edition prints, still exhibits artists making prints, including Tom Muller, Lesley Duxbury, Caspar Fairhall, Richard Gunning and Douglas Shearer. At Port Jackson Press in
Melbourne, the artists most popular with their clients are Charles Blackman, John Olsen, Milan Milojevic, Rona Green and Jazmina Cininas.
The situation is somewhat different when it comes to collectors of indigenous prints. Basil Hall, from Basil Hall
Editions in Darwin, who is one of the veteran master printers of Aboriginal work, says: "Collectors tend to either look for names (Lofty Nadjamerrek, Rover Thomas, Gulumba Yunupingu, Eubena Nampitjin) or typical images/scenes that they have experienced in the Top End (Mimi figures, rock art generally, fish et cetera) and wish to buy as a memento." Investment print collectors are drawn to boxed sets, where he nominates among the most popular Yuendumu Doors and Fire & Water Suite (both from Yuendumu printed by Northern Editions);
Garma Suite & Garma Panel (Basil Hall Editions); Balgo Suite (Northern Editions); Injalak Suite (with a hand-painted ceramic box by the great rock artist Lofty Nadjamerrek, printed by Basil Hall Editions) and Leo Christie's Republic Unlimited Folios (Basil Hall Editions, Red Hand and Australian Print Workshop). Emma Fowler-Thomason from Northern Editions in Darwin notes: "Our most popular artists at the moment are Eubena Nampitjin, Kathleen Paddoon, Helicopter Tjungurrayi, Raelene Kerinauia, and Timothy Cook. All these artists are well established, if not senior artists, with a strong following and reputation. Balgo prints are certainly popular for their striking colour and vibrancy; all of these artists' prints are renowned for their fresh contemporary appeal."
One of the most interesting indigenous printmakers to gain prominence in recent years is Torres Strait Islander artist Dennis Nona (aAR 12), who this year has been included in the Asia-Pacific Triennial 5 (see BUZZ this issue) in Brisbane. Theo Tremblay, another veteran master printer of indigenous art who has worked with Nona for more than a decade, has collaborated with him to produce truly huge and intricate linocut prints. Michael Kershaw from Australian Art Print Network in Sydney writes: "Dennis pioneered the visual narrative style that typifies Torres Strait Islander prints today".
Public art institutions have had a chequered history when collecting Australian prints. In 1988 the NGA received the $1 million Gordon Darling Australasian Print Fund and has been comprehensively assembling a major archival collection of Australian prints which will culminate in its large The Story of Australian Printmaking 1801-2005 exhibition, which opens in March 2007. Anecdotally, there is evidence that some of the state collections have been reluctant to actively buy Australian prints (with the possible exception of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander work), deferring to Canberra with its Gordon Darling money. Regional galleries, especially Wagga Wagga,
Newcastle and Ballarat, have major collections of historical significance and many universities have built up important collections. These public art collections, together with some of the high-profile print prizes, do much to keep printmaking in the public eye.
The Australian printmaking world is a very broad church and virtually all of the major commercial art galleries deal in Australian prints to some extent and on occasion have a print show, especially by artists who are part of their stable but who may not be primarily printmakers. Numerous printmakers sell directly out of their studios, participate in various selling print society shows or sell through private websites. Art media do have changing fortunes in popularity and today Australian printmaking, in all of its dazzling richness and diversity, is experiencing a major renaissance with art collectors.
Image: John Olsen, Peak Hour (from the Seaport of Desire portfolio), etching and aquatint, edition of 90, 43.5 x 59.5cm, 2002, published by Port Jackson Press Australia.