We begin our 2025 programme with an exhibition dedicated to the highly specialised discipline of handmade print. The Original Print Show brings together artists working with all types of printing methods, from the classic intaglio techniques of etching, drypoint and mezzotint, to collagraph, woodcut, monotype, screenprint and blind embossing. The show gives space and profile to one of Fine Art’s most misunderstood areas of creative practice, demonstrating the extraordinary potential of printmaking for the creation of contemporary works of art. 

Printmaking emerged in the 1400s as a way to produce multiple copies of an image from a single carved wood or metal plate. Over the following centuries it flourished as an industrial process, facilitating the production of printed books from the mid fifteenth century onwards, before making its way into the fine arts in the early sixteenth century. In contemporary art, printmaking has moved away from notions of industrial process and has become a practice based on the creation of original images made, essentially, by pressing one surface against another. The incredible variation of techniques now available to artists, using numerous types of printing plate and surface treatments, make the art of printmaking one of the most diverse. 

This exhibition includes contemporary work by both high profile and emerging artists, as well as those whose printmaking practice accompanies their painting and sculptural work and will be accompanied by a collection of contemporary sculpture and ceramics.