Wharepuke Print
Studio
Established in 2005 and set within the 2-hectare Wharepuke Subtropical Garden of National Significance in Kerikeri, Bay of Islands, the Wharepuke Print Studio is NZ's first and only dedicated acrylic resist etching studio. Primarily a personal studio for Mark Graver's work the studio also offers short courses, residential workshops/art holidays and, until Covid international residencies. Following an intensive 7-week copper etching course in January 2021 a small group of regular users now have an open access day one day per week. Workshops for small groups are offered in acrylic resist etching using copper and aluminium. No acids or solvents are used in the studio, etching takes place with metal salt solutions, hard resists and aquatints use acrylic recipes and soft grounds are made using and soy wax and lithography ink. Water based Akua intaglio inks are used to print. The studio has a vertical etching tank for Edinburgh Etch and three presses, two Conrad etching presses one large - 1.7m x 915 mm and one small E-15 and a Sakura 800 x 400mm. Rather than a regular calendar courses are arranged to suit participants times and dates. On site accommodation can be provided in one of our 5 self-contained tourist cottages set within the garden. Past residents have come from the UK, Australia, USA, Austria and the Netherlands and we hope to offer international artist residencies when travel restrictions allow. The complementary Art at Wharepuke gallery sits alongside the studio and specialises in work by international printmakers in solo, group, studio and exchange exhibitions. Also on site is the Wharepuke Sculpture Trail. Opened in 2015 the 1km trail winds through the garden with 3D works presented alongside the rare and unusual plants. Completing the Wharepuke experience is Māha, our on-site restaurant offering east meets west dining and acting as a second gallery space for represented artists.
Nominated Artists-
Alan Thomas
Alan Thomas gained a Ph.D. in science (1985, University of London, U.K.) which led to a fulfilling career in fundamental bioscience. To continue a lifelong interest in human limitations regarding how the world may be understood he undertook an MFA (2020, Whitecliffe College, Auckland, New Zealand). In exploring materiality and how it is conceived, Alan’s work engages in uncertainty and provisionality, using processes that prompt interactions between materials placed under simple constraints. It examines apparent states of entity to explore the disconnect between captured moments that appear to make tangible some material reality, and accumulating evidence (from evolutionary modelling and the neurosciences) that denies a palpable reality. Recent exhibitions in Auckland include from a limited set of circumstances (2018) and Promissory Things (2019) both exploring how kaolin clay is understood to operate in a constrained environment and In Denial (2020), and 71% Great Expectations (joint show with Nicholas Pound 2020) which ask how molten metal is understood to interact in a constrained environment. All these works are substantially sculptural in nature. metallexicon ii and iii are large, free-hanging, unmounted works to allow the paper to respond to the environment. The works derive from 3D paper impressions of metal castings from In Denial, which have been used to modify a soft ground on metal.
'Metallexicon Light'
Soft ground etching on aluminium
140 x 75 cm
€535
'Metallexicon Dark'
Soft ground etching on aluminium relief print
140 x 75 cm
€535
Mark Graver
Mark Graver is an award-winning artist printmaker, tutor and curator based in Kerikeri New Zealand. Originally from the UK he studied at Leeds Polytechnic (B.A. Hons Fine Art 1985-88) and Camberwell College of Arts, London (MA Printmaking 1994-95). He moved to NZ in 2003 and established the Wharepuke Print Studio in 2005 and Art at Wharepuke gallery in 2009. He is author of Non-Toxic Printmaking (2011, London, A&C Black), is an editorial board member for the journal Drawing, Research, Theory, Practice and has curated print projects, exhibitions and symposiums in the UK, NZ and Australia. A member of Prism Print International he was elected as an Associate Fellow of The Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, London (ARE) in 2019 then promoted to a full fellow (RE) in June 2021. His work is held in many public collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK, The Art Gallery of Ballarat, Victoria, Australia, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, Australia and in China, Thailand, NZ, USA, Mexico, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan, South Africa and Europe. 15 Houses and Time Slides are part of a series of Imagined and Remembered Places, images of places and spaces visited, recorded, imagined and remembered. The works begin by re-visiting photographs and sketches made at a particular time and place. 15 Houses maps a personal journey from 1964 to the present: from England to Australia, back to England, to Scotland, back to England and then to New Zealand. The journey is recorded through layered images gathered from personal photographs and Google maps of the 15 houses lived in along the way. Time Slides is made from digitised 35mm slides found after my father died in 2011. The images are his, taken between 1963 and 1985, layered much like memories, and manipulated - things come to the fore, emerge then disappear.
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'15 Houses'
Digital pigment print
50 x 90 cm
€695
'Times Slides'
Digital pigment print
50 x 90 cm
€695
Interested in purchasing one of these artworks? Please contact the Workshop/Studio directly at the email address above. Prices are for unframed prints.