Laith Who? Who is Laith McGregor? Self portraits have been a re-occurring feature of his work, offering a range of clues as to what the artist might look like. A beard, shoulder length hair, and a certain gentle wistfulness of expression have all become familiar to those following his practice. And yet these features recur with a twist, sometimes the beard is hugely overscaled, the image may in fact be a portrait of the artist’s father, or it may slip into alternative masculine terrain: rock zombie, cartoon alien or holy man. Laith McGregor looks back at us from a surprising array of masks and alternative postures. Disembodied and dislocated eyeballs accentuate this game of looking, sometimes meeting our gaze unexpectedly, even alarmingly. Equally uncanny is McGregor’s habit of leaving a vacant white gap in the place of an eye. Storyteller celebrates the first body of prints created by McGregor, recipient of the Australian Print Workshop Collie Print Trust Printmaking Fellowship. In this group of lithographs, and single large scale etching we see McGregor apply drawing and painting techniques to entirely new processes with excitement, ambition and a sense of play. ‘DARK WAS THE NIGHT’ presents yet another bearded figure, a man seated by a lake, Jesus by the Sea of Galilee. As with many of McGregor’s work the title also offers a link to music, the song ‘Dark was the night, cold was the ground’ by gospel blues singer Blind Willie Johnson. This etching is enormous in scale; at 2.4 by 1.8 metres it stretches the technical limits of the etching process. Printed in black the tonal variations describing shadows and highlights are an adaptation of the distinctive sectional ‘cross hatch’ technique developed by McGregor in his drawings. Gently curving arrays of parallel lines mark out the major tones, further apart for lighter areas, more closely spaced for the dark. To achieve such consistency and control when drawing onto such a large scale prepared copper sheet would be a challenge even for a highly experienced printmaker. Such finely modulated mark-making is offset by the artist’s choice to leave three expansive areas of the copper sheet unmarked, two blank circles in the sky and a long straight line beneath the seated figure. This introduces a sense of framing, as if we are looking through a window, perhaps at a landscape lit by a double moon. It also suggests a motif already familiar in McGregor’s work: two blank eyes and the long flat line of a mouth – not happy, not sad, perhaps just somewhat melancholy. Dark was the night, and solemn the thoughts of the figure on the rock. McGregor uses emoticon haiku slightly differently in lithographic self portraits such as ‘OHNE TITEL’ (sad) and ‘GREG’ (big smile), a U shape rather than a straight line is playfully worked onto, or into, the surface of the lithograph. Printmaking allows, even encourages, variation and experiment. Just as an actor might adopt certain roles, our storyteller uses the process of printmaking to play with different methods and guises, including blind embossing, monotype, overprinting and chine-collé. Viewing the results of these experiments, we encounter an unexpected array of answers to the question ‘Who is Laith McGregor’. McGregor cuts into and remodels our expectations of surface, gesture and authenticity.
LAITH McGREGOR Storyteller A u s t ra l i a n P r i n t Wo r k s h o p Co l l i e P r i n t Tr u s t P r i n t m a k i n g Fe l l o w
Image Details ‘OHNE TITEL’ Lithograph Two lithographic plates, one hand-drawn by the artist and one photo-lithographic, printed in an edition of 20, plus proofs Image size: 56 x 38cm. Paper size: 56 x 38cm ‘THESE DAYS’ Lithograph Three photo-lithographic plates, printed in an edition of 20, plus proofs Image size: 41 x 27.5cm. Paper size: 56 x 38cm ‘HEAVY’ Unique state lithograph One photo-lithographic plate with hand-drawing by the Artist Image size: 38 x 28cm. Paper size: 56 x 38cm ‘OK’ Unique state lithograph One photo-lithographic plate with monoprint by the Artist Image size: 56 x 38cm. Paper size: 56 x 38cm ‘FICTION’ Lithograph One lithographic plate drawn by the Artist, printed in an edition of 20, plus proofs Image size: 53 x 43.5cm. Paper size: 76 x 56cm ‘GLASSHOUSE’ Lithograph One lithographic plate drawn by the Artist, printed in an edition of 20, plus proofs Image size: 55 x 44cm. Paper size: 76 x 56cm ‘DARK WAS THE NIGHT’ Etching Drawn on four copper plates by the Artist, printed in an edition of 10, plus proofs Image size: 240 x 180cm. Paper size: 249 x 188cm
All works produced by the Artist in collaboration with APW as a result of an APW Collie Print Trust Printmaking Fellowship undertaken in 2013/14. All works printed by APW Senior Printer Martin King at Australian Print Workshop, Melbourne.
Geraldine Barlow Senior Curator/Collection Manager Monash University Museum of Art
‘DARK WAS THE NIGHT’ Etching
‘OHNE TITEL’
‘THESE DAYS’
Lithograph
Lithograph
Published on the occasion of the exhibition LAITH McGREGOR Storyteller Australian Print Workshop Collie Print Trust Printmaking Fellow held at Australian Print Workshop Gallery, Melbourne 29 March – 17 May 2014 ISBN 978-0-9871923-3-2 Published by Australian Print Workshop Inc, Melbourne, Australia, 2014 First printed in an edition of 750 © Australian Print Workshop Incorporated and the Artist, 2014 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical (including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval systems), without permission in writing from the publisher.
‘fiction’
‘glasshouse’
Lithograph
Lithograph
Australian Print Workshop 210 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, Victoria 3065 PO Box 1236, Collingwood, Victoria 3066 Tel: 03 9419 5466 E: auspw@bigpond.com www.australianprintworkshop.com Gallery hours: Tuesday to Saturday 10am–5pm
Laith McGregor is represented by STATION, Melbourne Cover Image: ‘DARK WAS THE NIGHT’ (detail) Australian Print Workshop gratefully acknowledges the generous support of The Collie Print Trust which is managed by ANZ Trustees and the Victorian Government through Arts Victoria.
‘HEAVY’
‘OK’
Unique state lithograph
Unique state lithograph
Laith Who? Who is Laith McGregor? Self portraits have been a re-occurring feature of his work, offering a range of clues as to what the artist might look like. A beard, shoulder length hair, and a certain gentle wistfulness of expression have all become familiar to those following his practice. And yet these features recur with a twist, sometimes the beard is hugely overscaled, the image may in fact be a portrait of the artist’s father, or it may slip into alternative masculine terrain: rock zombie, cartoon alien or holy man. Laith McGregor looks back at us from a surprising array of masks and alternative postures. Disembodied and dislocated eyeballs accentuate this game of looking, sometimes meeting our gaze unexpectedly, even alarmingly. Equally uncanny is McGregor’s habit of leaving a vacant white gap in the place of an eye. Storyteller celebrates the first body of prints created by McGregor, recipient of the Australian Print Workshop Collie Print Trust Printmaking Fellowship. In this group of lithographs, and single large scale etching we see McGregor apply drawing and painting techniques to entirely new processes with excitement, ambition and a sense of play. ‘DARK WAS THE NIGHT’ presents yet another bearded figure, a man seated by a lake, Jesus by the Sea of Galilee. As with many of McGregor’s work the title also offers a link to music, the song ‘Dark was the night, cold was the ground’ by gospel blues singer Blind Willie Johnson. This etching is enormous in scale; at 2.4 by 1.8 metres it stretches the technical limits of the etching process. Printed in black the tonal variations describing shadows and highlights are an adaptation of the distinctive sectional ‘cross hatch’ technique developed by McGregor in his drawings. Gently curving arrays of parallel lines mark out the major tones, further apart for lighter areas, more closely spaced for the dark. To achieve such consistency and control when drawing onto such a large scale prepared copper sheet would be a challenge even for a highly experienced printmaker. Such finely modulated mark-making is offset by the artist’s choice to leave three expansive areas of the copper sheet unmarked, two blank circles in the sky and a long straight line beneath the seated figure. This introduces a sense of framing, as if we are looking through a window, perhaps at a landscape lit by a double moon. It also suggests a motif already familiar in McGregor’s work: two blank eyes and the long flat line of a mouth – not happy, not sad, perhaps just somewhat melancholy. Dark was the night, and solemn the thoughts of the figure on the rock. McGregor uses emoticon haiku slightly differently in lithographic self portraits such as ‘OHNE TITEL’ (sad) and ‘GREG’ (big smile), a U shape rather than a straight line is playfully worked onto, or into, the surface of the lithograph. Printmaking allows, even encourages, variation and experiment. Just as an actor might adopt certain roles, our storyteller uses the process of printmaking to play with different methods and guises, including blind embossing, monotype, overprinting and chine-collé. Viewing the results of these experiments, we encounter an unexpected array of answers to the question ‘Who is Laith McGregor’. McGregor cuts into and remodels our expectations of surface, gesture and authenticity.
LAITH McGREGOR Storyteller A u s t ra l i a n P r i n t Wo r k s h o p Co l l i e P r i n t Tr u s t P r i n t m a k i n g Fe l l o w
Image Details ‘OHNE TITEL’ Lithograph Two lithographic plates, one hand-drawn by the artist and one photo-lithographic, printed in an edition of 20, plus proofs Image size: 56 x 38cm. Paper size: 56 x 38cm ‘THESE DAYS’ Lithograph Three photo-lithographic plates, printed in an edition of 20, plus proofs Image size: 41 x 27.5cm. Paper size: 56 x 38cm ‘HEAVY’ Unique state lithograph One photo-lithographic plate with hand-drawing by the Artist Image size: 38 x 28cm. Paper size: 56 x 38cm ‘OK’ Unique state lithograph One photo-lithographic plate with monoprint by the Artist Image size: 56 x 38cm. Paper size: 56 x 38cm ‘FICTION’ Lithograph One lithographic plate drawn by the Artist, printed in an edition of 20, plus proofs Image size: 53 x 43.5cm. Paper size: 76 x 56cm ‘GLASSHOUSE’ Lithograph One lithographic plate drawn by the Artist, printed in an edition of 20, plus proofs Image size: 55 x 44cm. Paper size: 76 x 56cm ‘DARK WAS THE NIGHT’ Etching Drawn on four copper plates by the Artist, printed in an edition of 10, plus proofs Image size: 240 x 180cm. Paper size: 249 x 188cm
All works produced by the Artist in collaboration with APW as a result of an APW Collie Print Trust Printmaking Fellowship undertaken in 2013/14. All works printed by APW Senior Printer Martin King at Australian Print Workshop, Melbourne.
Geraldine Barlow Senior Curator/Collection Manager Monash University Museum of Art
‘DARK WAS THE NIGHT’ Etching
‘OHNE TITEL’
‘THESE DAYS’
Lithograph
Lithograph
Published on the occasion of the exhibition LAITH McGREGOR Storyteller Australian Print Workshop Collie Print Trust Printmaking Fellow held at Australian Print Workshop Gallery, Melbourne 29 March – 17 May 2014 ISBN 978-0-9871923-3-2 Published by Australian Print Workshop Inc, Melbourne, Australia, 2014 First printed in an edition of 750 © Australian Print Workshop Incorporated and the Artist, 2014 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical (including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval systems), without permission in writing from the publisher.
‘fiction’
‘glasshouse’
Lithograph
Lithograph
Australian Print Workshop 210 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, Victoria 3065 PO Box 1236, Collingwood, Victoria 3066 Tel: 03 9419 5466 E: auspw@bigpond.com www.australianprintworkshop.com Gallery hours: Tuesday to Saturday 10am–5pm
Laith McGregor is represented by STATION, Melbourne Cover Image: ‘DARK WAS THE NIGHT’ (detail) Australian Print Workshop gratefully acknowledges the generous support of The Collie Print Trust which is managed by ANZ Trustees and the Victorian Government through Arts Victoria.
‘HEAVY’
‘OK’
Unique state lithograph
Unique state lithograph
Laith Who? Who is Laith McGregor? Self portraits have been a re-occurring feature of his work, offering a range of clues as to what the artist might look like. A beard, shoulder length hair, and a certain gentle wistfulness of expression have all become familiar to those following his practice. And yet these features recur with a twist, sometimes the beard is hugely overscaled, the image may in fact be a portrait of the artist’s father, or it may slip into alternative masculine terrain: rock zombie, cartoon alien or holy man. Laith McGregor looks back at us from a surprising array of masks and alternative postures. Disembodied and dislocated eyeballs accentuate this game of looking, sometimes meeting our gaze unexpectedly, even alarmingly. Equally uncanny is McGregor’s habit of leaving a vacant white gap in the place of an eye. Storyteller celebrates the first body of prints created by McGregor, recipient of the Australian Print Workshop Collie Print Trust Printmaking Fellowship. In this group of lithographs, and single large scale etching we see McGregor apply drawing and painting techniques to entirely new processes with excitement, ambition and a sense of play. ‘DARK WAS THE NIGHT’ presents yet another bearded figure, a man seated by a lake, Jesus by the Sea of Galilee. As with many of McGregor’s work the title also offers a link to music, the song ‘Dark was the night, cold was the ground’ by gospel blues singer Blind Willie Johnson. This etching is enormous in scale; at 2.4 by 1.8 metres it stretches the technical limits of the etching process. Printed in black the tonal variations describing shadows and highlights are an adaptation of the distinctive sectional ‘cross hatch’ technique developed by McGregor in his drawings. Gently curving arrays of parallel lines mark out the major tones, further apart for lighter areas, more closely spaced for the dark. To achieve such consistency and control when drawing onto such a large scale prepared copper sheet would be a challenge even for a highly experienced printmaker. Such finely modulated mark-making is offset by the artist’s choice to leave three expansive areas of the copper sheet unmarked, two blank circles in the sky and a long straight line beneath the seated figure. This introduces a sense of framing, as if we are looking through a window, perhaps at a landscape lit by a double moon. It also suggests a motif already familiar in McGregor’s work: two blank eyes and the long flat line of a mouth – not happy, not sad, perhaps just somewhat melancholy. Dark was the night, and solemn the thoughts of the figure on the rock. McGregor uses emoticon haiku slightly differently in lithographic self portraits such as ‘OHNE TITEL’ (sad) and ‘GREG’ (big smile), a U shape rather than a straight line is playfully worked onto, or into, the surface of the lithograph. Printmaking allows, even encourages, variation and experiment. Just as an actor might adopt certain roles, our storyteller uses the process of printmaking to play with different methods and guises, including blind embossing, monotype, overprinting and chine-collé. Viewing the results of these experiments, we encounter an unexpected array of answers to the question ‘Who is Laith McGregor’. McGregor cuts into and remodels our expectations of surface, gesture and authenticity.
LAITH McGREGOR Storyteller A u s t ra l i a n P r i n t Wo r k s h o p Co l l i e P r i n t Tr u s t P r i n t m a k i n g Fe l l o w
Image Details ‘OHNE TITEL’ Lithograph Two lithographic plates, one hand-drawn by the artist and one photo-lithographic, printed in an edition of 20, plus proofs Image size: 56 x 38cm. Paper size: 56 x 38cm ‘THESE DAYS’ Lithograph Three photo-lithographic plates, printed in an edition of 20, plus proofs Image size: 41 x 27.5cm. Paper size: 56 x 38cm ‘HEAVY’ Unique state lithograph One photo-lithographic plate with hand-drawing by the Artist Image size: 38 x 28cm. Paper size: 56 x 38cm ‘OK’ Unique state lithograph One photo-lithographic plate with monoprint by the Artist Image size: 56 x 38cm. Paper size: 56 x 38cm ‘FICTION’ Lithograph One lithographic plate drawn by the Artist, printed in an edition of 20, plus proofs Image size: 53 x 43.5cm. Paper size: 76 x 56cm ‘GLASSHOUSE’ Lithograph One lithographic plate drawn by the Artist, printed in an edition of 20, plus proofs Image size: 55 x 44cm. Paper size: 76 x 56cm ‘DARK WAS THE NIGHT’ Etching Drawn on four copper plates by the Artist, printed in an edition of 10, plus proofs Image size: 240 x 180cm. Paper size: 249 x 188cm
All works produced by the Artist in collaboration with APW as a result of an APW Collie Print Trust Printmaking Fellowship undertaken in 2013/14. All works printed by APW Senior Printer Martin King at Australian Print Workshop, Melbourne.
Geraldine Barlow Senior Curator/Collection Manager Monash University Museum of Art
‘DARK WAS THE NIGHT’ Etching
‘OHNE TITEL’
‘THESE DAYS’
Lithograph
Lithograph
Published on the occasion of the exhibition LAITH McGREGOR Storyteller Australian Print Workshop Collie Print Trust Printmaking Fellow held at Australian Print Workshop Gallery, Melbourne 29 March – 17 May 2014 ISBN 978-0-9871923-3-2 Published by Australian Print Workshop Inc, Melbourne, Australia, 2014 First printed in an edition of 750 © Australian Print Workshop Incorporated and the Artist, 2014 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical (including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval systems), without permission in writing from the publisher.
‘fiction’
‘glasshouse’
Lithograph
Lithograph
Australian Print Workshop 210 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, Victoria 3065 PO Box 1236, Collingwood, Victoria 3066 Tel: 03 9419 5466 E: auspw@bigpond.com www.australianprintworkshop.com Gallery hours: Tuesday to Saturday 10am–5pm
Laith McGregor is represented by STATION, Melbourne Cover Image: ‘DARK WAS THE NIGHT’ (detail) Australian Print Workshop gratefully acknowledges the generous support of The Collie Print Trust which is managed by ANZ Trustees and the Victorian Government through Arts Victoria.
‘HEAVY’
‘OK’
Unique state lithograph
Unique state lithograph