From Australia: 20 Graphic Positions

From Australia: 20 Graphic Positions, 45 Workshops, 112 Voices is a print portfolio and community-engaged printmaking project commissioned and produced by Trent Walter, artist and director of Melbourne-based publisher Negative Press. The project responds to ‘Aus Australien’, a print portfolio published in 1988 by Rene Block, the German coordinator of the 1984 and 1986 Biennales of Sydney. Literally translated as ‘From Australia’, Block’s portfolio of eight artists coincided with the Bicentennial and has become a celebrated time capsule of Australian art.

Approaching 2020 and the 250th Anniversary of the Pacific voyages of Captain James Cook, Walter believes it is essential to revisit what ‘from Australia’ looks like now. Recently there has been a much needed re-evaluation of Australian history and the legacies of colonialism, and the ways this can be addressed through artwork. From Australia builds from and extends this trajectory by creating a time capsule of Australian identity that expands significantly beyond Block’s eight artists’ perspectives. To generate the content for the exhibition, Walter is drawing together the principal attributes of his collaborative print practice: working with individual artists and artists collectives; and running community-based printmaking workshops with diverse and marginalised communities.

Interwoven through the gallery space the elements of From Australia: 20 Graphic Positions, 45 Workshops, 112 Voices aims to spark conversation and engagement with notions of Australian identity and nationhood at this critical juncture in our nations’ history.