Printmakers to stage exhibit at Old Fire Station Gallery

A GROUP of printmakers will be the first to exhibit in the Old Fire Station Gallery when it re-opens following roof repairs.

Print at the Park comprises 12 artists, who will be displaying original handmade prints, framed and unframed, in both 2D and 3D, available to buy.

There will also be greetings cards at the exhibition, which takes place from Thursday until Tuesday, April 7.

The artists taking part are Joyce Amirahmadi, Jan Bastow, Jo Boddy, Sue Davey, Gill Goodwin, Jane Gray, Ros Ingham, Sue Pither, Peter Martin, Susan Thomas, Trish Roberts and Paul Woolley.

They met at the studios in South Hill Park arts centre, in Bracknell.

Jane Gray, who lives in Northfield End, says: “They have a fabulous print room and I’ve been going there for well over 10 years to the printmaking classes, that’s where I’ve met everybody.

“Printmaking is having a plate which is a surface from which to put your ink onto and then print. We print on huge great roller presses at South Hill Park and many of us have got our own presses that we use.”

There will be around 72 prints, six from each artist.

“They are all hand-printed, so each one is unique. In the exhibition, we’ve actually put some of the equipment that we use, so we’ve put the plates that some of the prints came from.

"So if somebody has done an etching which is in the exhibition we bring in some of the actual zinc plates from which the etching was made. That’s quite good fun, especially for kids, they can go round and try and find the print on the wall that matches the plate. So we’ve started to bring in a few rollers and pots of ink, just as a small display so people get the idea of what it’s about.”

The artists are delighted to be the first to exhibit in the re-opened gallery. “It’s a fantastic gallery, we’ve done it for many years. It suits our exhibition very nicely. It’s all been decorated and it’s quite nice and bright.”

Printmaker Jo Boddy, 46, from Ascot, who is married with two children, aged 11 and nine, had done art A level but went on to a different career. When her children were little, she wanted to start being creative again.

“I had always kept sketchbooks,” she says, “and started going, ‘I need something that is not children that’s just me’, type thing.

“An evening painting and drawing class at South Hill Park turned into going down to West Dean College to do a foundation diploma, which is lots of short courses over two years and you kind of consolidate all of them.

“It was during those short courses that I discovered printmaking and just went, ‘Oh my god, this is so cool, why have I never done this before?’.

“So while I was doing this foundation diploma I decided to treat myself to a year’s worth of regular going to the print room at South Hill Park to learn lots of different types of printmaking and that was how I met the Print at the Park group.”

In 2022, Jo started an online master’s degree in fine art at Central Saint Martins. She was inspired by the landscape of Swinley Forest to create her Gathering series of monoprints.

“For my master’s I decided to branch out in technique but stick with one place, so I stuck with Swinley Forest because I was living in Bagshot at the time. “We moved last year, we actually moved back to my parents’ house that we bought and they built a house in the garden.

“I’m on Woodlands Ride so I’ve got Swinley Forest literally at the end of my road, whereas living in Bagshot I used to just walk up Vicarage Road.

“I would drive to the Look Out and walk to Caesar’s Camp and try and explore it from different ends as well.

“So I stuck with Swinley Forest and one of the things that I found fascinating to do was to go on colour hunts. You get loads of greens and browns and you get the bluebells in the ancient bit that’s over by Sophie and Edward’s pad in the Bagshot end. There’s an area that gets filled with bluebells,   it’s amazing in spring. But also there’s actually quite a lot of orange in the forest when you start looking.

“So, the Gathering series was monoprints made using leaves and things that I’d foraged in the forest, so that orange came out of ‘what unusual colour can I find?’. Once you start looking for pinks and oranges there’s loads of it on tree trunks and mushrooms and all sorts of weird places and the way that the bracken glows at certain times of year is really orangey.

“I made these perfect monoprints and then I tore them so I collaged them back together. I was trying to colour match in my sketchbook and then mix the inks and I was trying to find the zingiest orange.”

Print at the Park’s spring exhibition is at the Old Fire Station Gallery in Upper Market Place (behind the town hall), Henley, from Thursday, March 26 to Tuesday, April 7, open from 10am to 4.30pm daily. 

On Sunday, March 29 (11am to 1pm) there will be a chance to meet the artists, all  welcome. For  information, visit www.printattheparkgroup.co.uk