The Printing Girls | A Sense of Place

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    Theresa Jo Wessels
The Printing Girls | A Sense of Place

What are the meanings a place generates for us? Why are we so drawn to certain places? How does the place we take up define us? How do we imagine, yearn for or remember a place?

A Sense of Place explores these questions in an exhibition devoted to the medium of printmaking, a technique that leaves an imprint on a surface, such as paper, much in the same way that we as humans have an impact on the places that we embody.  

The term a sense of place is a multidimensional social construct that refers to people and their spatial settings and imply the many emotions that people attach to places. Our experience of place is influenced by factors such as events, time, history and memories. Our sense of place is aligned with belonging and our identity.

Almost one hundred original prints have been carefully curated to present this exhibition to you. Each printmaker has her own perspective on the space and place she takes up, or finds herself in. The artists have articulated their unique personal views on the theme and the three curators, Yolanda Warnich, Madelize van der Merwe and Emma Willemse, were delighted with the variety of notions of a sense of place that were expressed.

Below follows a few examples of the diversity of expressions.

Many of our printmakers find solace in nature, as can be intuited in the works of Kristen McClarity or Sanmarie Harms, while for some others the industrial heartbeat of the city is invigorating, such as in the work of Elize de Beer and Helen Lotter. 

Some printmakers make reference to human bodies and the spaces they inhabit, such as Clare Menck and Isabel Kuijers, while others refer to the body as a political site, such as in the work of Fiver Locker or Genevieve Schultz. The political connotations to place and how place is contested and challenged, are explored by printmakers such as Mariette Momberg, Kay Fourie, Theona Truter and Carmen Ford.

Several artists pay tribute to animals and their contributions to our ideas of sense of place, such as Lyn van Greunen and Allison Klein, or in Claudia Rivett-Carnac’s evocative work entitled A sense of wonder, or in the series of works by Rose-Marie Schutze in which she is making us aware of the plight of the girdled lizard, which is an endangered species.

As an all women artist line-up, the interpretation of a sense of place is strongly interlinked with homes and belonging. Whether it is in the vibrant works by Amy-Jane van den Bergh or the nostalgic images of Mimi van der Merwe, the home and its environment is at the core of our sense of place.

THE PRINTING GIRLS (TPG) is an all-female collective of South African-based artists who work in print. Here’s the background story to our #PRINTLIKEAGIRL gang. In 2009, the six founders of TPG graduated in the Arts from Rhodes University which has always had a strong history of printmaking. During a class reunion exhibition in 2016 they inspired each other to create in print again and began to exhibit as The Printing Girls. The following year they decided to invite new female printmakers to join up, and TPG in its current incarnation began to materialise. But the main focus has never changed - to create a platform exclusively for our country's women printmakers to share ideas, network and exhibit together.

TPG is a collective of empowered female printmakers from around South Africa who choose to work in this diverse community. Essentially, as individual artists, each of us makes original prints as a significant part of our ongoing creative output. And as women we are flexible, innovative and encourage each other to follow our own paths – no taboos. Some of us use traditional printmaking methods – etching, relief printing, screenprint - while others exploit contemporary digital, and when in an adventurous mood we'll try out combinations of both.

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