Working Class to Print Class: Limerick Printmakers Group Exhibition opens this Thursday

Working Class to Print Class: Limerick Printmakers Group Exhibition opens from 6 pm, Thurs 13th April

Limerick Printmakers are proud to announce the launch of ‘Working Class to Print Class’, a Limerick Printmakers Group Exhibition of collaborative and thematic work created by LP studio members and printmaking students from the Limerick School of Art & Design (LSAD) in conjunction with students of printmaking from Georgia College & State University, Georgia, USA.

Limerick Printmakers Group Exhibition “Working Class to Print Class” poster

The Limerick Printmakers Group Exhibition will open in the Belltable, 69 O’ Connell street on Thursday 13th April from 6 pm & all are welcome to attend. The work will remain on show until Saturday 22nd April 2017. All are welcome.

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Matthew Forrest, Assistant Professor of Art at Georgia College and Jess Tobin, manager of Limerick Printmakers devised the brief for the project in the late summer of 2016, following discussions about the commonalities shared by Limerick city and Milledgeville, where Georgia College is located.

Both regions are united by similar histories of having large working class populations living in areas that traditionally hosted specific forms of industry and employment. Naturally, this has had a direct effect on how both regions have developed, as have the changes in the types of dominant industry that have declined and emerged over the decades.

Both groups involved with this project share a love and developing knowledge of printmaking as both a series of processes to be explored and mastered and as a distinct art form.

The theme of the Limerick Printmakers Group Exhibition highlights the fact that both groups are part of a working class and challenges participants to explore and investigate all possible facets of this – social, economic, political and personal – through the medium of printmaking.

Limerick participants were paired together at random with their Georgia counterpart with both parties then encouraged to utilise a range of tools to maximize mutual communication – including popular social media platforms, mobile text services and Skype – in order to discuss their own ideas, learn about each others localities and overcome the challenges associated with creating work with a partner who resided over 3,500 miles and several time zones away.

Stemming from these interactions, each student from Georgia College created a print that would act either as a companion piece to their Irish partner’s response (and vice versa) or that could be worked directly over by their Limerick partner in order to create an entirely new collaborative work shared by both printmakers.

Limerick artists featured are Elizabeth Cleary, Jennifer Cummins, Anne Deering, Aine Finnegan, Janey Hogan, James Kearney, Sorcha Lynch, Ciara McElearney, Kate McElligott, Jess Moloney, Kate O’ Shea & Louise Maher, Jess Tobin, and Sinead Williams.

Corresponding Georgia artists are Javier Martinez, Jessi Askew, David Thomas Babb, Emily Eubanks, Logan Thomas, Morgan Sanders, Callie Waters, Haley Wigley, Emily Jovert, Carrie Cooper, Tyler Reynolds, Matthew Forrest of Georgia College, and Abigail Thomas.

The suite of prints will also be exhibited in multiple locations in Georgia, the USA in 2017.

Limerick Printmakers Studio & Gallery acknowledges the financial support of the Arts Council, Fás, Limerick City Council and the Department of Tourism, Culture and Sport.

To read more stories about Limerick Printmakers click here

To read more about LSAD click here