Location: Art Gallery
When: 12 - 23 February 2025
Time: Wednesday to Saturday 10am - 4pm, Sunday 1pm - 4pm
About This Exhibition:
East Side Print at the Grange presents work by staff and members of East Side Print, a screenprinting studio in Brighton. Our membership comprises professional and non-professional artists, ranging from beginners to seasoned screenprinters and everything in between. Expect a variety of handprinted work covering many different subject matters and approaches, all united by a love of the screenprinted image.
A bit about us:
East Side Print is a community interest company, set up in 2020 by artists Cath Bristow, Louise Bristow and Moose Azim. Our aim is to provide access to creative visual arts through practical courses and open access sessions in our studio workshop, and through outreach projects in the community. We have a lively programme of short courses and one-day workshops covering screenprinting on paper and fabric printing, mono-printing, collage, and printing with natural dyes.
Our membership scheme is open to anyone who is confident working independently in our studio – usually these will be people who have attended our courses, or people who have learnt how to screenprint elsewhere. Check out our online gallery to see some of our members’ work (eastsideprint.org/gallery/index), and more importantly come along and see our exhibition at The Grange!
A bit about screenprinting:
Screenprinting is the process of applying a printed image to a surface using ink pushed through a stencil. A screen is made by stretching fine polyester mesh over a wooden or metal frame. A stencil is then used to block out areas of the mesh, producing the printing area and thus the image. The stencil can be made using paper cut or torn to the desired shape, or else through a photographic exposure process that allows for the reproduction of fine detail, photographic images or hand-drawn marks. Prints are ‘pulled’ by pushing ink through the screen onto the surface below using a semi-flexible blade called a squeegee.
A screenprinted image is built up in layers, with each colour being printed separately. Because screenprinting inks are translucent, overlaying colours produces additional colours, for example yellow printed on top of blue will produce green. A simple screenprint may be made up of one or two colours, a more complex image will have been built up over many more layers.
Screenprinting originated in China in the Song Dynasty (960-1279). Originally a mesh made from silk was used, hence the alternative name for the process – silkscreen. Its use in the West was mainly as a commercial printing process until a group of artists in the USA formed the National Serigraph Society in 1940, with the aim of promoting the artistic aspects of the process and differentiating their work from industrial screen printing. Nowadays it is a popular process used by artists, illustrators and designers.