PARKER Contemporary presents a curated selection of material-led works that position printmaking and papermaking as vital and conceptually rigorous practices within contemporary art.

This presentation brings together artists whose works are grounded in analogue, process-based methods as deliberate strategies to explore urgent social, political and environmental questions. These material-led approaches speak to the power of slowness, tactility and repetition in a hyper-digital age, offering a space for reflection, resistance and renewal.

Too often, the word “print” is used as a catch-all, mistakenly associated with reproduction. But in the context of contemporary practice, printmaking is not a secondary ‘copy’ medium, it is a primary site of historical relevance, invention, experimentation and expression. Every work on display has been conceived and created directly by the artist through processes that are both technically and physically demanding as well as materially rich.

Here, traditional techniques such as lithography, relief, silkscreening, fibre-based papermaking and intaglio are reconsidered through a contemporary lens, where the act of making is inseparable from meaning. Labour, texture and process are not merely aesthetic but carry the weight of personal and collective narratives. Whether addressing environmental grief, cultural memory, or shifting identities, the works on view demonstrate the critical relevance of these historically grounded methods today.

PARKER Contemporary’s presentation speaks to the depth and diversity of contemporary printmaking practice emerging from Australia’s east coast. This is a celebration of artists working at the intersection of process and concept where materials are not neutral, but charged, and every mark or fibre is part of a larger inquiry and holds deep connection for the artist.

Materiality and processes serve as conceptual foundations throughout the work of Alethea Richter, Carolyn Craig, Chris Hagen, Claudia Husband, Clinton Barker, Freyja Fristad, Matthew Hurdle, Matthew Newkirk, Michael Phillips, Miguel Andres Villanueva, Pat Hoffie, Ross Woodrow, and Tim Mosely. Investigating identity, relationships, cultural memory, and material transformation, these artists negotiate the intersections of tradition and innovation within contemporary art taking these highly physical and tactile ways of making 

Barker, Fristad and Villanueva synthethise Australian and cross-cultural influences, while Hurdle’s meditative approach similarly explores the human condition by pulping sackcloth and ash into paper as a metaphor for working through guilt and humility. Print as language is interrogated through Richter’s silkscreen prints, which contrast analogue tactility with the pixelated aesthetic of digital imagery, and Phillips’ multilayered relief prints reconfigure traditional syntax. Woodrow expands on this dialogue by anthropomorphising architectural elements in his shaped copper plate etchings, collapsing the past and present of classical ruins. Craig and Hoffie complicate notions of history and subjectivity, drawing from personal and cultural narratives, while Newkirk critiques cultural capitalism through the binary structures of silkscreen. Responding to the Australian landscape, Husband and Hagen, both Tamarind Institute-trained, foreground nature as a site of meaning, while Mosely’s reductive linocut relief print revisits the notion “wilderness” and “landscape”. 

Held in national and international collections, these artists highlight the global significance of works on and of paper. This exhibition positions Australian print culture within a broader contemporary discourse, offering collectors immediate engagement and lasting value. Collectors are invited to engage with work that is both materially rich and intellectually engaged offering not just a return to the physicality of art-making, but a deeper investment in how art can speak to the time we live in.