Points of Contact: Printmaking in Britain 1949 -2019

2 May - 15 June 2019 

Austin / Desmond Fine Art is delighted to announce Points of Contact, a show curated by Julian Page that surveys seventy years of printmaking in Britain.

The exhibition borrows its title from a series of prints by Victor Pasmore made during the 1960s and 1970s. Here, Points of Contact becomes a description of the mechanics of printmaking, of the printed image’s moment of generation when paper meets ink. Points of Contact also describes the complicated matrix of relationships that connect these forty-four artists across seventy years of printmaking. The exhibition suggests print’s wider historical resonances—from electronics to the first moon landing fifty years ago, print has influenced the twentieth century’s most significant achievements. The diversity of methods and forms visible in the exhibition testifies to the visual power of print since 1949. The exhibition joins together these forms with this wider historical argument in order to reassert print’s vitality today.