So this event is a little surprising. For tonight, despite the persistent rain and the hidden entrance through an aspirationally-Mediterranean pub beer garden, this large arched space is packed to the point where people are scrabbling around the doors to get in. And, even more perplexing to some, is that they haven’t come to see the latest indie band or the ‘new Zadie Smith’ – everyone in here is staring at screen prints.
Admittedly, the appeal is not necessarily just the artistic medium – this is the gallery space of Black Rat Projects, which tonight is exhibiting upcoming street artists such as Swoon (see image far right). But the medium is still very important. The Black Rat Projects artists, alongside other artists such as Radiohead collaborator Stanley Donwood, are part of a screen printing revival. It is a shift that has also seen small collectives, such as Print Club London and Henningham Family Press (see Profile overleaf), adopt this once-mass media, which was left behind in the digitisation of manufacturing and the rise of inkjet and giclee, and which has laboured in ever-decreasing niches since.
This resurgence of a print technique first used in 10th century China, is set to get some official recognition at next week’s Pick Me Up graphic arts event at Somerset House (for more information, see bit.ly/74tRrB). Assistant curator Sarah Mann promises a raft of screen printing talent on show and explains that the technique’s revival in the past couple of years is partly down to its "immediate quality and unique texture". Others, though, have a different theory for screen printing’s revival, with some claiming economic circumstance as a key influence.
Mike Snelle, of Black Rat Projects, is one of the latter. At the height of the economic boom, he says the art buying public were after a glossy and conceptual product, one fitting in with the phenomenon of the ‘new’ that seemed to prevail. As the purse strings got tighter, this obsession of buyers for the ‘new’ lessened, and Snelle says the emphasis now is on traditional techniques.
"People are seeing the value now in traditional ways of doing things," he explains. "In difficult economic times, people want more value for money, they want to see something an artist has worked on directly, something that has a production value to it. Screen printing gives that along with superior quality. For 10 years, giclee and inkjet have been very popular, but their limitations are starting to become apparent now."
Working within limitations
Some may argue that screen printing is just as limited, but artist Stanley Donwood, responsible for all Radiohead’s artwork since second album The Bends, has gone some way to prove that theory wrong. His recent London exhibition, Work on Paper, showed off a whole host of work he completed using screen printing in a range of innovative ways. One series used black paint screen printed on to gold foil, another piece consisted of 24 screen-printed colours and varnishes, and one canvas used annodised aluminium powder mixed in with a transparent screen printing medium. Perhaps the most striking, though, features his signature bear logo. For this series, Donwood screen-printed wood glue onto a clean sheet, and then sprinkled diamond dust (ground glass) on top. Pushing the boundaries, however, is not easy, especially for the paintings on foil.
"Black print on top of foil is incredibly easy to screw up," admits Donwood. "The ink doesn’t dry on the foil so it’s very easy to smudge. They were all supposed to be editions of 100. I made 120 thinking I’d probably screw up 20, In the end, I think I only got editions of around 80…"
At the Black Rat Projects exhibition, there were similarly ambitious examples of screen printing, with artists using as many as 20 colours and multiple paper layers. It’s clear that both upcoming artists and those of more renown like Donwood, are embracing screen printing as a creative medium.
This, according to Kate Newbold, a director at screen printing studio Print Club London, has been key to the process’s revival. She argues that there is much more of an awareness about screen printing now due to the street artists that are using it moving into the mainstream – as well as the likes of Donwood taking up the technique. She adds that Print Club is selling more prints than it ever has done as a result. There is, however, an economic angle here, too.
"People buy with the hope that it will inflate in price, following on from the stories of people buying a Banksy for next to nothing and it now being worth vast sums," she explains. "So even for artists we sell who are relatively unknown, those buying or looking to buy will always ask us whether the price will go up. Our view is that it shouldn’t be about that. You should love the piece and want to buy it because you like it. Any value increase after that should be a bonus."
This economic concern isn’t something the artists themselves consider, according to Black Rat Projects’ Snelle. He dispels the opinion that screen print has come to the fore because those practicing it are more commercially minded than others have been. For him, it is a genuine revival driven by artistic process, not by consumerism. The consumers have just cottoned on and liked what the artists were doing.
Newbold agrees. She thinks consumers are actively seeking out more craft-based products and are now more appreciative of workshop-based traditional skills. You just have to look at the TV listings or your local market to confirm this is the case, with everything from knitting to thatching becoming more mainstream. People, it seems, are searching for ways of reconnecting with ‘old’ skills to escape the digital domination where everything is taken out of our hands.
From the point of view of the Henningham Family Press (HFP), the desire for more control is certainly one of the main reasons behind its adoption of screen printing. Run by husband-and-wife team David and Ping Henningham, this family company publishes and prints books from their East London workshop, as well as producing commissions for work such as wedding stationery and posters. Almost everything they do is screen printed and David Henningham says this is because he wants to be involved in the process of printing, not a bystander to it.
"If you look at silkscreen versus inkjet, inkjet is so unconnected," he explains. "You can’t do much to improve the quality with inkjet, you literally just have to press go and watch it come out. With screen printing, you can intervene with the process. I think control and the ability to make creative decisions is really at the heart of what screen printing is about and what makes it popular with the audience."
But then, as Henningham points out, other print and craft techniques give the same level of control. He says etching especially takes up less space than screen printing and is arguably easier to get started with, while enabling the same relationship with the work. Etching also satisfies consumer demand for providence that some people have pointed to as a reason for screen printing’s revival. Be it food, electronics or art, people now want to know how the thing they are purchasing was made and where it came from. With screen printing, you can easily see that journey, but you can also see it with etching and linocuts.
The big screen?
So there has to be another explanation as to why screen print, and not etching or any other technique, has taken off. What it could be down to is screen printing’s accessibility. At the Black Rat Projects event, HFP were running one of their ‘Chip Shops’. This is where the couple produce one-colour screen prints at an event onto chip board along a theme (at Black Rat, it was non-swearing expletives such as Sacré Bleu). They stick them in an old chip shop counter and sell them wrapped in paper for a pound. Ping Henningham explains that at this basic level, they’ve had three-year-olds producing something really bold, colourful and effective.
"It’s a really social and accessible technique that let’s you make something bold and colourful quickly and easily," she explains. "The harder stuff takes practice, of course, but screen printing is so accessible at the basic level, that a novice can make really nice prints if someone talks them through it."
Print Club London does exactly that. It holds screen-printing workshops where people can screen print-posters and
T-shirts with the help of professionals at its studio. These workshops are incredibly successful, selling out almost as soon as they are announced and last year they attracted the attention of the likes of Time Out magazine.
The popularity of these chances to experience screen printing comes as no surprise to Stanley Donwood. For him, part of the technique’s revival is down to the pure joy you can get out of the process.
"Screen printing is such a pleasurable experience," he explains. "One colour on, then another colour, and then another colour, and you gradually build it up until, eventually, you take the frame off and you have this amazing thing, and you’re just like ‘Yeah!’"
So from both the artists’ and the consumers’ point of view, screen printing puts a tick in so many boxes it is unsurprising that it has enjoyed a resurgence and outstripped comparable rivals such as etching and linocut. Yes, economic factors are playing a part in both shaping the demand for traditionally-made products that are trackable and for driving sales, but at its core, the revival of screen print is all about its accessibility, its limitless potential as a process and the joy in both making these bold, colourful prints and owning them. For the print industry in general, the latter is something that could be learned from. In the pursuit of automation and one click production, the joy of the print process is increasingly being left behind and an injection of screen print’s vitality could be just what the industry needs.
PROFILE THE HENNINGHAM FAMILY PRESS
The Henningham Family Press began life back in 2006 as a part-time project in the relative cultural black hole of Harold Wood in Essex. Husband and wife team David and Ping Henningham had clocked up five university courses between them, but it was a chance encounter with a bookbinder that got David first, and then Ping, into printing.
"My workshop at the Slade was opposite this incredible new bookbinding workshop and there was this woman standing in there just twiddling her thumbs," explains David. "It turned out she had been booked to teach people how to bind books, but no-one had signed up. So I ended up spending the day with her and she taught me all the basic techniques."
From there, a traineeship in book binding at Book Works for David followed, before the couple decided to put their skills together and start a publishing business, The Henningham Family Press, producing both deluxe books and cheaper, simpler books to be distributed in the UK and beyond. At it’s heart, would be the screen printing techniques David had been honing and teaching Ping since his days at Slade.
"For the first two years we were just mastering screen printing," explains David. "We were working part-time as well as running the press, but as the work increased those part-time jobs began to drop away. In the past two years, we have worked very hard at honing the service and so we are really in the third year of doing it properly."
This year they moved to a bigger workshop in London Fields and for the first time, due to the extra space, they are able to say yes to pretty much every commission that comes there way. These derive from designers, authors and artists, as well as people off the street wanting stationery or albums or books printed to exacting and high-quality standards. The couple also produce their own literature, beautifully bound and printed.
For their off-the-shelf titles, they outsource the text printing to print company Calverts, but the couple screen prints everything else for their publications. The quality of the screen printing is exceptional, with photorealistic images and, as far as the couple know, the smallest screen printed text around. But David Henningham says the quality and the skill of the screen prints can get even better.
"You can work at screen printing for four, five, even 10 years and you will still be improving," he explains.
The couple plan to expand further and take on some permanent staff, but screen printing will remain the print technique of choice for the business, whatever changes occur.
"There is so much to learn, so many different things to try and that makes screen printing really exciting," says David.
