A new gallery has quietly slipped onto the scene right in the heart of Melbourne’s Arts Precinct. The Print Council of Australia fronts a lane off Sturt Street near the Guild vitrines.
A 1973 lithograph, abstract and expertly handled, sits in the window. The price tag is just $220. The artist is from Sydney and not well-known. Her family is putting on a retrospective with the help of curators from the Print Council.
Print-makers pride themselves on knowledge of techniques and the collegiality of working with technicians. Barbara A Davidson had an eye for abstraction but her heart was in landscape and intimate scenes involving figures.
She died in 2022 at the age of 94 after a career spanning three decades and studies at East Sydney Technical College and Camden Art Centre in London.
Davidson made little books out of her etchings and many images contain the harbour bridge in the background.
Many artists keep plugging away. It’s not the recognition or money that counts but their vision. An artist does a close reading of a scene and brings out its invisible characteristics.
Groups of people preoccupied Davidson in the 2000s and her fluid line brought them together. Proximity is an excellent way of representing cohesion as is the development of printing techniques that create texture.
The people in Grandstand 5 and Picnic 4 are notable for their muted and velvety colours, created by overlapping and combining etching with collagraphy.
There are stories to be discovered by those who take the time to visit the exhibition, such as Davidson’s move to Double Bay and the layered effects she was able to create.
The Council moved into the Guild Building in March 2023 and has been quietly staging exhibitions since then. This tribute to a printmaker’s life work stands out amongst the noisier exhibitions down in the Arts Precinct.
The gallery is across the road from the Victorian College of the Arts and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.
Representation in Davison’s hands might look like nostalgia for Sydney but her techniques of framing a view and colouring are admired by afficionados.
Barbara A Davidson, a retrospective of a Sydney printmaker
Print Council of Australia, Studio 2 Guild, 152 Sturt Street, Southbank
Exhibition continues to 29 November 2024
Free entry
For more information, visit: www.printcouncil.org.au for details.
Images: Barbara A Davidson, Window with Waratah B, lithograph, 1996 | Barbara A Davidson, Picnic 4, etching and collagraph, 2012
Words: Rhonda Dredge