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Printmaking

About 

From the evolution and artistry of Japanese woodblock prints to Gutenberg’s revolutionary printing press in the 15th century, from the 1960s when Andy Warhol’s screen prints shook up the art world to the arrival of the contemporary digital age, printmaking has played a vital role in art and culture and continues to push creative boundaries in the 21st century.  

The National Art School’s outstanding Printmaking faculty instructs students in the Bachelor of Fine Art (BFA) and Master of Fine Art (MFA) programs to develop key technical skills across and explore the boundaries of contemporary visual art to find their own path as an emerging practicing artist. The BFA course covers the full range of printmaking processes including relief, intaglio, screen printing, lithography and digital print process.  

Printmaking students at NAS have access to well-equipped workshops and studios that allow them to acquire studio skills across a broad range of printmaking techniques and materials, from relief printing to digital print process, taught by highly experienced lecturers, all of whom are practicing artists, and assisted by specialised workshop technical staff. Working with a variety of media, students create a wide range of images and objects that can include multiples, artist’s books, site-specific works and traditional prints. 

Teaching in our printmaking studios combines technical instruction and critical discourse that direct students toward the discovery of a personal visual language. Students at NAS gain the in-depth conceptual understanding and studio discipline required to pursue a successful career in visual art.  

The faculty team is led by Head of Printmaking Simon Cooper, also NAS Head of Studies and an accomplished practicing artist who joined the School in 2001. He has taught and exhibited around Australia and overseas, with work held in collections nationally and internationally. All Printmaking lecturers at NAS are also experienced professional artists, dedicated to engaging, supporting and challenging their students throughout their degrees.  

NAS is renowned for its studio-based, hands-on model of learning. All Printmaking students receive intensive face-to-face teaching in small classes and are allocated their own studio in the final year of their BFA studies. Postgraduate students also have their own studio on campus. As well as thriving under the tuition of experts, Printmaking students are encouraged to support each other and work collaboratively to develop their studio practice, share research and experiment with printmaking processes and materials.  

In the BFA program, all students take Printmaking in their first year as part of their studio rotations which also includes painting, photomedia, ceramics, and sculpture. In second year, students focus fully on a chosen studio area such as Printmaking, however there are always opportunities for cross-disciplinary work.

Facilities 

NAS’s extensive Printmaking facilities include: 

  • Intaglio printmaking facilities suitable for the development of small to large-scale works utilising both copper and zinc etching plates and a broad range of etching techniques 
  • Relief Printmaking facilities suitable for the development of small to large-scale relief words utilising both wood and linoleum 
  • Screen Print studio suitable for the production of small to large-format works utilising both photographic resists and stencil techniques 
  • Lithography facilities utilising direct print process for both stone and plate lithography 
  • Book binding and letterpress facilities for the production of artist books and multiples 
  • Resources for the production of photographic printmaking including digital print and heat transfer 

NAS has a number of public spaces and opportunities for students to exhibit their works and be involved in professional work experience over the course of their degrees. 

CONTACT

Please fill in our online enquiry form below or call us on +61 2 9339 8651 to speak to our Student Services Team.

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Alumni 

Printmaking graduates from NAS have gone on to successful careers in the art sector as full-time practising artists, custom printers, studio managers and technicians, art educators and gallery employees. 

Angus Fisher

Philjames

Kirtika Kain

Alexi Keywan

Deborah Williams

Core Subject 

This outline for Printmaking Studio Elective 1, a core first year subject at NAS, gives an insight into the foundations of the Printmaking program. 

Printmaking Studio Elective I

Objectives 

This subject aims to further the creative, intellectual and speculative capacities of each student through practical studio experience. Knowledge of the Printmaking discipline is extended by means of research, presentations and discussions. 

Subject Content 

Printmaking Studio Elective I follows a program of thematically based class projects that explore the principles of fine art printmaking. Students will 

  • Examine the principles of printmaking processes
  • Research and discuss formative historical, conceptual and technical issues in printmaking
  • Conceive, develop and realise idea through the use of printmaking processes
  • Relate the material nature of printmaking processes to conceptual concerns
  • Critically discuss their own work and the work of others
  • Exercise professional standards of studio practice including Workplace Health and Safety (WHS) guidelines applicable to the Printmaking studio

Learning Outcomes 

On completion of this subject, students will be able to: 

  • Demonstrate technical competence in basic printmaking processes
  • Understand the potential of printmaking processes as art making strategies
  • Conceive, develop and realise ideas through the use of printmaking processes
  • Describe formative historical, conceptual and technical issues in printmaking
  • Work co-operatively, and in accordance with Workplace Health and Safety (WHS) standards applicable to the Printmaking studio

 

Short Courses

In addition to full degree study, NAS offers an extensive range of Short Courses suited to all ages and experience levels. The courses are taught by practicing artists and are run on campus and online throughout the year, covering every artistic discipline from ceramics to sculpture to photomedia. NAS also offers an extensive school holiday program for all primary and high school students. Visit the Short Course pages for more information about what’s coming up.

STAFF

  • Dr Carolyn McKenzie-Craig

    Head of Printmaking

  • Dr Jessica Priebe

    Art History & Theory Lecturer (Sessional), Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

  • Angus Fisher

    Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

  • Dr Daniel Mudie Cunningham

    Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

  • Esther Neate

    Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

  • Rebecca O’Shea

    Printmaking Studio Technician

  • Janet Parker-Smith

    Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

  • Jason Phu

    Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

  • Brenda Tye

    Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

  • Mirra Whale

    Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

  • Justine Yousef

    Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

  • Stephanie Nova Milne

    Photomedia Lecturer (Sessional), Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

  • Dr Clare Humphries

    Printmaking Lecturer

  • Annabelle McEwen

    Printmaking Lecturer

  • Caroline Rothwell

    Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

  • Christopher Dolman

    Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

  • Em Ingram-Shute

    Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional), Sculpture Lecturer (Sessional)

  • Hayley Egan

    Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

  • Isabella Kennedy

    Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

  • Sarah Mosca

    Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

  • Shivanjani Lal

    Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

  • Tristan Chant

    Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

Dr Carolyn McKenzie-Craig

Head of Printmaking

BFA Griffith University, BFA (Hons) Griffith University, PhD (QCA) Griffith University

Carolyn Craig is an artist whose work examines the coded construction of subjectivity. She investigates inscriptive performance as an active site for the maintenance and enforcement of types of cultural normativity with a particular focus on the idea of “habitus” as discussed by Pierre Bourdieu. Carolyn deconstructs gestural actions as tropes and stereotypes by utilising her own body as a site of absurd action. The performative traces of these gestures are recorded and inverted to query the distribution and maintenance of fixity. She is one half of the artist collective BRUCE & Barry with Heidi Stevens.

Areas of Specialisation:

Carolyn’s interests and areas of specialization include gender and typological representations, photo discourse and history, drawing ontologies, contemporary print-media and social praxis and contemporary art.

Subjects and Courses Taught:

STU100 Studio Introduction to Printmaking
PRI200 Printmaking 2
PRI300 Printmaking 3
PRI400 Printmaking Honours
Expanded Printmedia
MFA Supervision

Dr Jessica Priebe

Art History & Theory Lecturer (Sessional), Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

Jessica Priebe is an art historian and curator specialising in AI art, blockchain and metaverse technologies. At NAS, she teaches across the BFA and MFA degree programs, pioneering Australia’s first AI and Web3-enabled curriculum for students exploring the intersections of art, technology and decentralised structures. Jessica serves as an adjunct adviser in emerging technologies at the Museum of Contemporary Art and as a researcher with RMIT University’s Blockchain Innovation Hub. She has curated immersive virtual exhibitions for leading institutions and organisations such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, SXSW, Soho House and NAS. A former research fellow at the University of Sydney, Jessica has published extensively on art history, collecting practices, education innovation and the impact of emerging technologies on contemporary art practice. Her research has been supported by the Paul Mellon Centre, Creative Australia, the Sydney Intellectual History Network and the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

Angus Fisher

Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

Angus Fisher is a practicing artist living and working on the Hawkesbury river just north of Sydney. His art practice investigates nature, ecology and the evolving attitudes and changing philosophical interpretations of the ‘natural’ world. Primarily working with etching and drawing, Angus utilises traditional working techniques, methodologies and aesthetics to place his work in direct connection to historical contexts and traditions. Angus is a graduate of the National Art School and is currently represented by Australian Galleries in Australia and Jonathan Cooper Gallery in the UK. He has worked as an artist and teacher around Australia and previously as an archaeological illustrator in Greece. Angus has been a finalist in several art prizes around Australia including the Waterhouse prize for Natural history and was the 2018 recipient of the National Art School’s Cité des Art Paris studio residency.

Dr Daniel Mudie Cunningham

Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

PhD, Western Sydney University. BA (Hons), Western Sydney University.

Dr Daniel Mudie Cunningham is an artist, curator and critic renowned for his work with contemporary Australian artists and collections. He was the Director of Programs and Senior Curator at Carriageworks from 2017-2022. Previously, he has held leadership and curatorial roles at Artbank and Hazelhurst Arts Centre, and teaching and research positions at Western Sydney University, where he completed a BA (First Class) Honours in Art History and Criticism in 1997 and a PhD in Cultural Studies in 2004.

Notable recent curatorial work includes solo projects at Carriageworks with Reko Rennie, Mel O’Callaghan, Karla Dickens, Dean Cross and Cherine Fahd; curating The National 2019: New Australian Art; and initiating Suspended Moment: The Katthy Cavaliere Fellowship which partnered Carriageworks with ACCA and Mona by commissioning major new works by Frances Barrett, Sally Rees and Giselle Stanborough. In 2022, Suspended Moment was adapted as an exhibition that will tour to eight venues over two years through Museums and Galleries of NSW.

Since the mid 1990s, his prolific writing has taken the form of artist monographs, catalogue essays, academic papers, articles, and reviews. His editing work includes the publications Artlink (2021), Sturgeon (2013-16), and Runway (2009).

His work as an artist has been widely exhibited and acquired by public collections including Artbank, City of Sydney, Macquarie University, Murray Art Museum Albury, Wollongong Art Gallery, and private collections such as Museum of Old and New Art. In June 2023 Wollongong Art Gallery will stage a mid-career survey exhibition of his practice, curated by James Gatt.

https://danmudcun.com/

Esther Neate

Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

Esther Neate pushes traditional boundaries in print to produce objects that bear the impressions of time and process. She holds a Master Degree of Fine Art in Printmaking and has eight years’ experience in arts education. Her prints, woodblocks and porcelain sculptures have been exhibited at Annandale Galleries and Dominik Mersch Gallery in Sydney.

Rebecca O’Shea

Printmaking Studio Technician

Rebecca is highly skilled in both the technical and artistic aspects of printmaking, managing the studio spaces and being Covid and WHS compliant. Rebecca was previously the Technical Officer in the Printmaking Department at UNSWAD, since 2017. Rebecca is committed to helping students develop their art practices and visual language and highly invested in the student experience. 

Janet Parker-Smith

Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

Janet Parker-Smith is a Sydney based artist whoes practice incorporates Printmedia, Sculpture, collage and Altered books. She has been exhibiting nationally and internationally for over 25 years. She has had several solo exhibitions and has been chosen as a finalist in many art competitions. Her work has been purchased by the AGNSW and NGV. Her work is held in numerous public and private collections.  Janet works in the Public Programs and is a sessional teacher at the National Art school. She has been teaching across Printmaking and bookmaking for over 25 years.

Jason Phu

Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

Jason is a practicing artist working across a wide range of media. His work references personal narratives and poetry, he sometimes uses humour in his work. He is currently based in Gertrude Contemporary as a studio artist. He is represented by STATION Gallery and Chalk Horse gallery.

Brenda Tye

Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

Brenda Tye was born in Malaysia in 1969. She is a printmaker specialising in the areas of custom and collaborative printmaking with other artists, and teaching art across various mediums, techniques and age groups. In 2009 she established art school and custom printing business named The Art School Studio.

Mirra Whale

Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

Mirra Whale is a Sydney based painter, drawer and printmaker. Her works explore beauty in the everyday ‘banal and common place’ subjects by presenting them from another angle. She has been a finalist of several art prizes including the Archibald Prize, Kedumba Drawing Award, Still Life Award, Emsla, Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize, Salon Des Refuses, Portia Geach Portrait Prize, Shirley Hannan Portrait Prize, AME Bale Art Prize, Mortimore Art Prize and the Manning Gallery Prize.

In 2019 she was the winner of the Eutick Memorial Still Life Award (EMSLA) in Sydney,  2011 was winner of the Royal Art Society North Sydney Drawing Prize.

Mirra works in public programs and is a sessional teacher at the National Art School. She has also taught workshops at the AGNSW, Bundanon Trust, SH Ervin Gallery, PLC, Kings School, Art Est, Lake Macquarie Regional Gallery and run programmes for the Dept of Education. Her works are held in both public and private collections. Currently represented by Mitchell Fine Art Gallery.

Justine Yousef

Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

Justine Youssef is an artist interested in moments and places that reconfigure authoritative realities. Working with video, scent and processes of auto-ethnography, their projects often create encounters with what is warped through displacement. Recent works have been realised by galleries and institutions including: 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (2018), UNSW Galleries (2019), PHOTO 2020 (2020) the Powerhouse Museum (2022), the Museum of Contemporary Art (2022) and the Hawai’i Triennial (2022).

Stephanie Nova Milne

Photomedia Lecturer (Sessional), Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

Stephanie is one-half of the intimately communal artist, nova Milne. nova Milne received a collaboratively credited MFA from UNSW, and an excerpt of their exegesis appears in the anthology TIME: Documents of Contemporary Art (Whitechapel & MIT Press 2013). nova Milne’s installations include screen-based sculpture, sound, experimental choreography, artists books, and their ongoing re-archiving actions.  They have been the recipients of several awards including the NSW Visual Artists Fellowship, a Samstag Scholarship, and the New York Foundation of the Arts Digital Fellowship. Their work is represented in public collections including the AGNSW, AGWA, The Centre Pompidou, Lyon Housemuseum & Deakin University. 

 

Dr Clare Humphries

Printmaking Lecturer

Annabelle McEwen

Printmaking Lecturer

Annabelle McEwen is an artist, educator and galley director, practicing on Gadigal Land with a Masters of Fine Art. McEwen’s practice employs photography, printmaking, casting and digital technologies to examine the impact of digitally mediated experiences on users and the paralleling virtual gaze on the gendered body. McEwen interrogates the surveilled and commodified body to speculate on the way its extraction is shaping user’s agency and the resulting epistemological shifts in our digital-milieu and future.​
They were awarded The Ellen O’Shaughnessy Printmaking Award in 2019. They were a finalist in the prestigious National Photographic Portrait Prize at The National Portrait Gallery, Canberra in 2024 and The Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize, Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre in 2024 among many others.
McEwen is a director at artist run initiative Schmick Contemporary. They were a contributor to Soft Stir’s Issue 03: Stories of Collision. McEwen was published with their article Image Transfer and The Virtual Gaze in The Print Council of Australia’s IMPRINT Magazine.
Recent notable exhibitions include solo-show The Smartest Horse in the World at Ethan Frome, Sydney Contemporary with The National Art School and DISRUPTION: Discourse and Exchange at King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Bangkok, Thailand.
Their work has been acquired by The National Art School, The City of Sydney Art Collection, USQ and RMIT among many others.
McEwen is lecturer at The National Art School. They have taught at other institutions including UNSW Art and Design, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Gallery Lane Cove + Creative Studios, Bankstown Arts Centre, 16 albermarle project space and Ravenswood School for Girls.

Caroline Rothwell

Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

Christopher Dolman

Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

Em Ingram-Shute

Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional), Sculpture Lecturer (Sessional)

Em Ingram-Shute’s practice concerns the affective in-between space across artist, object and viewer. She is interested in the communicative potential of found objects as a generative medium
that sets forth a series of events. Working with both discarded and commercial objects, her practices employs detailed material processes of deconstruction and recomposition. With this, she endeavours to break down binaries in language and power structures that are embedded within objects.
Ingram-Shute completed her Masters and Bachelors of Fine Art with a major in sculpture at the National Art School and was the recipient of multiple awards. She is represented by the Dominik Mersch Gallery where she has held two solo shows. Her works are held in private collections around Australia and in 2023 she received grants from Create NSW and corporate sponsors to exhibit at Sculptures by the Sea in Bondi. In 2024, she was awarded The National Art School Onslow Storrier Residency at the La Cite International Des Arts in Paris. Ingram-Shute practices in a not-for-profit artist collective that she co-founded in Inner West Sydney.

Hayley Egan

Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

Isabella Kennedy

Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

Informed by family narratives of loss, disappearance and displacement, my work explores intergenerational grief and communal power dynamics through the weighted metaphor of falling. Shifting movement registers, such as disequilibrium and suspension, are invoked to trace thresholds of (in)tolerance between love and fear, separation and interdependence, control and release. My practice asks – who gets to fall? Who has the liberty to yield, and who is pushed? As a universal but unequally experienced phenomenon, falling exposes asymmetrical power relations, revealing how we rely on, resist and often fail one another.
Dialectical tensions arise through the symbolic reprise of the parachute, a safety device that infers danger. Entangled skeins and rippling cavities of nylon float, twist and contort across surfaces in quiet and unfamiliar ways, evoking a paradoxical sense of threat and interconnection. Interior and exterior spaces curve and cleave. They are inverted, amplified, open and slowed, as a porous and opaque refusal, reflecting repeated attempts to both hold on and let go – asking what it means to be held.

Sarah Mosca

Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

Shivanjani Lal

Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

Tristan Chant

Printmaking Lecturer (Sessional)

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This holiday season, give the gift of creativity.

Whether your loved one is eager to begin their artistic journey, or they wish to continue learning and making art, a National Art School Gift Card will help them unlock their creative potential.

Give a gift that inspires. Buy a National Art School Gift Card today.

Learn more at the link in bio.

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Dec 19

Open
This holiday season, give the gift of creativity. Whether your loved one is eager to begin their artistic journey, or they wish to continue learning and making art, a National Art School Gift Card will help them unlock their creative potential. Give a gift that inspires. Buy a National Art School Gift Card today. Learn more at the link in bio.

Congratulations to all HSC students receiving their end of year results today! And to our future students, we look forward to meeting you in 2025.

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Dec 17

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Congratulations to all HSC students receiving their end of year results today! And to our future students, we look forward to meeting you in 2025.

On Tuesday 10 December, the National Art School celebrated the achievements and success of our students through awarding of prizes and scholarships. We would like to congratulate the award recipients for their hard work and thank our lecturers and technicians for their outstanding dedication and commitment to each and every student.

All of the prizes and scholarships awarded have been generously provided by our benefactors and sponsors, and we also thank you for your support.

Major Prize winners (pictured left to right): Oliver Abbott, Caleb Slater, Megan McKenzie, Freyja Fristad, Sarah R. Serfati, Ellen McCalmont, Benjamin Akuila, Chile Bainbridge, Elena Larkin. Photography by Peter Morgan.

View the full list of awards and recipients at the link in bio.

View

Dec 11

Open
On Tuesday 10 December, the National Art School celebrated the achievements and success of our students through awarding of prizes and scholarships. We would like to congratulate the award recipients for their hard work and thank our lecturers and technicians for their outstanding dedication and commitment to each and every student. All of the prizes and scholarships awarded have been generously provided by our benefactors and sponsors, and we also thank you for your support. Major Prize winners (pictured left to right): Oliver Abbott, Caleb Slater, Megan McKenzie, Freyja Fristad, Sarah R. Serfati, Ellen McCalmont, Benjamin Akuila, Chile Bainbridge, Elena Larkin. Photography by Peter Morgan. View the full list of awards and recipients at the link in bio.
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