Irish studios revel in the power of the print

The Arts:Irish specialist printmakers and artists in other mediums making limited- edition prints offer really good value, as evidenced by the work of two Dublin studios, writes Aidan Dunne.

If you happened to visit the recent exhibition marking the first five years of Stoney Road Press, or if you saw the accompanying book, Collaborations and Conversations, you may have changed your mind about the status of the fine-art print. In case you need any further persuasion, and even if you don't, you should visit the current show Milestones(also at the Office of Public Works headquarters at St Stephen's Green), marking the 25th anniversary of the Black Church Print Studio. It too is accompanied by a handsome publication.

What both exhibitions demonstrate very effectively is that limited edition prints are serious works of art. There is still a lingering prejudice against them on several grounds. The most common is that prints are not unique works. Because they are editioned, they cannot possess quite the same aura as the unique art object, and indeed cannot be possessed in quite the same, complete way. Then there is the feeling that prints are an adjunct to the more serious business of painting or sculpture, or an affordable substitute for those who can't quite stretch to the real thing.

None of this is accurate, though from the point of view of people buying art, there are issues particularly relevant to print. An experienced German art collector I met earlier this year said he sees prints as an essential component of any collection. While allowing that the market in print is susceptible to hype and other dubious practices (including virtually unlimited "limited" editions and prints that bear no relation to an artist other than a rapidly scrawled signature), he argued that other kinds of artworks are no less open to these or comparable problems. He feels print is important because, as he sees it, for many artists what they do in print will not be replicated in other areas of their activity.

From a hard-headed, commercial point of view, his advice for anyone considering acquiring a print seemed so sensible, and so commonsensical, that I wrote it down. "In the case of a painting, the painting is the artwork and that's that," he said. "When you move into the domain of editioned work, whether it is a bronze sculpture, a limited edition photograph, a fine-art print or some other form of multiple, you have to have a slightly different mindset. You have to remember that the edition, and not the specific thing you are looking at, is the artwork, and if the edition is unreasonably large and the price of what you are looking at seems high, the problem is that the artist is being promoted into an unrealistic price bracket." In other words, do the sums and you'll have a fair idea of the relative worth of a print by any particular artist.

With that in mind, it is apparent that, in most cases, prints by Irish artists, whether specialist printmakers or artists in other mediums making limited-edition prints, offer really good value. While most print studios in Ireland have developed visiting artists programmes in recent years, Stoney Road Press has pushed the process to a new level in the Irish context. The collector's conception of the edition as artwork has been central to Stoney Road's philosophy from its inception. Each project has been developed as a distinct and coherent project in itself, something that came across strongly when the works were gathered together at the OPW.

THERE IS Atremendous sense of substance to pretty much everything Stoney Road has done, even though each project is quite different in character - occasionally radically different in terms of both outward appearance and underlying aesthetic. Rather than accommodating artists into the working rhythm of a print workshop, which is the conventional approach to visiting artists, Stoney Road manages to reinvent itself around each new artist's project, which is impressive but also clearly demands a huge level of commitment on the part of the studio.

Stoney Road, which is based in a discretely located but well-appointed premises off East Wall Road, Dublin, is the brainchild of two people with a background in print, but also other activities, David O'Donoghue and James O'Nolan - a nephew of that other, illustrious O'Nolan, aka Flann O'Brien. James O'Nolan was a long-standing member of Dublin's Graphic Studio, O'Donoghue a printmaker turned gallery-owner. Both had vision, and they have managed to enlist the co-operation of many fine artists.

Among those who have made exceptional works at Stoney Road are Patrick Scott, Barrie Cooke, Alice Maher, Seán Shanahan, Charles Tyrrell and Richard Gorman. What is particularly striking about Stoney Road's work is its conceptual integrity: there is no feeling that it represents a diminished version of something else. Apart from prints per se, they have produced books and boxed sets of prints. And their definition of auditioned work is elastic enough to encompass painted steel sculpture, part of an ongoing project with Gorman, and Aubosson tapestries designed by Maria Simonds-Gooding.

DESPITE ITS NAME, the Black Church Print Studio was never based in the Black Church. When it seemed it might be, it was discovered that the interior of the building was coated with asbestos plaster that would be prohibitively expensive to remove.

Eventually, the studio was taken on as a client by Temple Bar Properties for incorporation into the Cultural Quarter as part of the redevelopment of Temple Bar. Its current, prize-winning premises, designed by McCullough Mulvin, makes the most of a restricted site, its stacked rooms above a double-height gallery (the Original Print Gallery), allowing in a great deal of daylight, front and back.

In a real sense, the progenitor of both Stoney Road and the Black Church Print Studio is the Graphic Studio, which is flourishing still and has recently started operating from its newly acquired premises off the North Circular Road. An artist-inspired initiative, the Graphic Studio developed a print-making ethos based on traditional methods and technology. To that extent, the other two studios are breakaways. The Black Church emerged from a familiar debate about tradition and innovation. Some printmakers were in favour of introducing photo-reprographic technology, others were against. Out of the split came a new print studio.

The role of photographic technology is fully evident in Milestones, which features work by past and present members of Black Church, selected by Andrew Folan and Brian Fay. Folan is himself something of a technological virtuoso, whose work has long transcended conventional definitions of print. Margaret O'Brien made her Dirty Trashseries of photo-silkscreen prints several years ago, and she has since moved on to the creation of ambitious, site-specific installations. As a body of work, Dirty Trash, in its genuine - as opposed to contrived or spurious - complexity, is an outstanding achievement, an important work of its time in the context of Irish art.

Fiona McDonald takes technology in another direction, exploring alternative, electrolytic methods of etching in works of striking originality. Experimentation, inventiveness and diversity are widely evident, in Sara Horgan's lino-etchings, for example, and in the work of Catherine Lynch, not to mention, Catherine Kelly, Paula Henihan, Aoife Dwyer, Colin Martin and more. It's worth pointing out, as well, that the use of photographic print technologies is not prescriptive, and that many of the Black Church printmakers - Vincent Sheridan, Anthony Lyttle, Cora Cummins, for example - work very effectively in terms of entirely traditional print media.

• Milestones: Celebrating 25 years of the Black Church Print Studio is at the Office of Public Works building, St Stephen's Green until Nov 22. See www.print.ie. Stoney Road Press, Stoney Road, Dublin 3 can be contacted at 01-8878544 or at www.stoneyroadpress.com