The Toorak Village Art Affair runs for four weeks from October 21 until November 17. This year, the Toorak Village Traders Association has invited Firestation Print Studio to showcase original graphic prints by local artists, in the shop windows of Toorak Village businesses.
The Firestation Print Studio is an open-access print workshop and gallery in Armadale where professional and amateur printmakers learn, print and exhibit. They foster new emerging artists and mentor graduates, providing a workshop, studios and gallery to show their art to the world. Manager Edith May has invited all Firestation artists to enter this year’s Art Affair where originality is of importance and linocut, etching and collagraph techniques will be displayed.
For over 21 years the Firestation Print Studio has developed into the printmaking Mecca of Melbourne’s inner east, a buzzing hub of activity where creativity is developed and explored within a supportive environment for both emerging and established artists.
The Toorak Village Art Affair will be presenting a diverse and exciting array of original limited edition fine art prints created by artists who use the Firestation facilities. The exhibition will feature many of the current Firestation artists-in-residence, with a broad range of talent on display.
Exhibiting artists include Margaret Manchee, who uses traditional etching and aquatint techniques to explore the human condition and its inherent paradoxes; Bronwyn Rees with her technique of traditional copper plate etching and drypoint on acetate where marks are made with various tools directly on a sheet of acetate and subsequently printed, and Gwen Scott, a Melbourne-based printmaker specialising in limited edition linocut prints. Her colour prints are “reduction prints” where the printing surface is removed after each colour has been printed.
Also on display will be works by Beata Slifierz, drawing on Polish folklore designs, Trudy Rice who works primarily as a printmaker and combines a variety of printmaking techniques in each work, including watercolour to add spontaneous marks and gestures, and Myra Kaufman, who creates colourful, multi-layered monoprints with collographs and stencils exploring the notion of memory, using printed motifs inspired by the minutiae and memorabilia hoarded over many years by her family in old shoe boxes.
The original prints of these and other members of the Firestation Print Studio will be on display for the Toorak Village Art Affair, as the vibrant community of the Firestation continues to grow and develop, contributing to the cultural life of the local area.
The Toorak Village Art Affair is a free event, open 24 hours a day and offering affordable original images for those who simply wish to buy a beautiful work of art. All prints are for sale and easily purchased from Terry White Chemist in Toorak Village – all details are in each store.
The Toorak Village Art Affair runs from October 21 to November 17.
Toorak Village is between Wallace Ave and Grange Road, just east of Williams Road; simply catch the No 8 Tram from Federation Square, along Toorak Road to stop no 35. You are invited to visit Toorak Village in October and November to view this ‘Art Affair’, enjoy the great shopping and take advantage of the warm hospitality of the traders.
Images
1) Gwen Scott – ‘Where’s the rabbit’
2) David Fraser – Waiting for mail’
3) Trudy Rice – ‘Seahorses’
4) Bronwyn Rees – ‘Transfigured night’ etching
5) Margaret Manchee – ‘HMV’ etching
