Symposium: The relevance of print in contemporary art education

This symposium was part of the Print Biennale 2016.

The guest speakers were those who have either been through a BA or Masters in Fine Art and or teach in the subject.

It was interesting to listen to a variety or artists who use print and the way in which they use it.

Themes that emerged for me were of using print as another way to look at the world and to capture images.

Artist Alex Charrington talked about making rubbings of drain covers to achieve a soft mark that couldn't have been captured in photography. I guess it's that accidental mark that comes from print making that attracts me to it.

He talked about using Japanese paper showing more detail than a digital photograph.

Julia McKinlay is part of Printers Symphony who travel around making prints outdoors where they find interesting things to print. She showed images of printing actual sharks found washed up on a beach. This was a way of showing that print can be used with the most basic of tools.

Ideas that I got from this were the possibilities of print rather than the constraints of needing a studio and full equipment.

Another theme that quite surprised me was that of institutions thinking of print as a craft rather than a fine art and that some artists seem to have had to battle with this idea.