Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair 2025

Irritating version of this annual show at Woolwich Works focusing on the art of the print maker.

The show had some good themes running through it but these weren't always clear. One featured 10 artists to mark the 10 years of the show which were scattered around the show but here was no distinct trail to find these. There were also curated sections with 50% of the hang being curated and the other 50% being space for galleries. Again this wasn't clear and some explanation of curatorial choices would have been interesting.

I will also make my annual moan about the small labels often placed too low or too high to read or so close to a deep frame so they were overshadowed. Please get this right. Add to this a new moan that I booked a session with two talks I wanted to go to. The day before I got email reminders to both but on the day I found that one had been moved forward an hour and a half to a time I couldn’t make and the other had been moved to another day. As was type this I was hoping to get a complementary ticket to the day it was moved to but I'm not holding my breath! I did go to another talk and will blog this next.

Anyway moans over and time to focus on some of the lovely work on show. Shout outs to Anna Morris's "Capturing the Turret" an image of a ruined building, Will Taylor's beautiful interior of Pugin's House and a beautiful etching with a gold background by Jean Bardon as I am a succour for a gold ground. I realise I've gone for the more figurative and traditional works.

There seemed to be a lot of monoprints such as Francesco Poiana's "Night Flux" series giving a sense of light moving through a landscape. A new technique to me was Carborundum and I asked the attendant on the stall to explain it to me. It's a metal plate where you build up the image carborundum on the surface to create the image and it gives an effect of texture.

Closed 16 November 2025


Stop press : I didn’t get a comp to the new date of the talk and never heard back from anyone.

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