Creating, Producing & Collecting Contemporary Prints

On The Occasion Of The Exhibition 'Takesada Matsutani. drop in time'.  Chris Stephens, Director of the Holburne Museum, Bath, chairs a stellar panel for this afternoon event, where speakers Helen Rosslyn,  Kate Van Houten and Helen Waters will address topics around printmaking such as: taste and value, practice and production, authorship and collaboration in the studio, and collecting. Chris Stephens has been Director of the Holburne Museum, Bath, since July 2017. Before that he worked at the Tate in London for twenty-one years, for much of that time as Head of Displays at Tate Britain and Lead Curator of Modern British Art. His numerous exhibitions include some of the Tate’s most successful shows, such as ‘Barbara Hepworth: Centenary’ at Tate St Ives in 2003 and, in London, ‘Francis Bacon’ (2008), ‘Henry Moore’ (2010), ‘Picasso and British Art’ (2012) and ‘David Hockney’ (2017). As a leading expert on modern British art, he has published extensively and his book on art in St Ives: The Art and the Artists has just been published. Helen Rosslyn is a writer, broadcaster and print specialist, and Director of the London Original Print Fair. Her publication, 'A Buyer's Guide to Prints' was published by the Royal Academy of Arts this year. Artist Kate Van Houten has paralleled her painting and sculpture with printmaking from the mid 1960s. She first worked with S.W.Hayter at the Atelier 17 going on to set up her own silkscreen studio, in Paris where she now lives with her husband Takesada Matsutani. Throughout her career she has made artist’s books and in 1996 began Estepa Editions, an independent press to collaborate with poets and artists. Kate will describe how she sought out S.W. Hayter, painter and printmaker at the Atelier 17. Hayter encouraged an experimental approach to printmaking, an ideal space for collaborations between artists, writers/poets, translators and artisans.   Helen Waters is a Director of the Alan Cristea Gallery in London, one of the world's largest publishers of original contemporary prints and editions. Before that she was curator of the New Art Centre, Roche Court in Wiltshire, and was the first curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff. She has curated numerous exhibitions both for the gallery and for external institutions, and has written catalogues on many contemporary artists including Christiane Baumgartner, Michael Craig-Martin, Edmund de Waal, Richard Long and Cornelia Parker. Helen will talk about print publishing and original prints using examples of projects she has worked on personally. She will also talk about what draws artists to make prints, why collecting prints is a good way to begin a collection, and what to look out for when buying prints. The event will take place at Hauser & Wirth Somerset. Tickets £10   Header image: Takesada Matsutani, La Propagation-10-Jaune, 1967, Etching on BFK paper