Roger Butler
Printed: Images by Australian artists 1942-2020
National Gallery of Australia, 2021
Printed: Images by Australian artists 1942—2020 traces the history of printmaking by Australian artists during an era of dramatic changes in Australian society and the visual arts. Arranged in three sections, it begins with the innovative wartime policy initiatives of the Commonwealth. Reconstruction Scheme which laid the groundwork for crucial development in the arts. In this period emigre artists and Australian artists returning home helped established printmaking societies, art galleries and publishers — which underpinned the growing popularity of this most democratic of art forms.
The second section explores the rise of political and social posters, which became one of the most dynamic forms of print practice in the 1970s and 1980s, and prints by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists which have been at the forefront of Australian art since the 1970s. The book’s final section discusses the continuing responses by printmakers to key concerns of our time, focusing on the themes of land and identity.
About the Author
Roger Butler AM is an authority on the history of Australian prints, posters and illustrated books. His career spans more than forty years and from 1981 to 2020 he headed the Department of Australian Prints at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.
Roger specialises in the history of Australian prints and printmaking ranging from pre-European settlement to the present. He also has a special interest in prints by Australian Indigenous artists and those from Papua New Guinea and the Pacific region.
He has written and curated exhibitions that have addressed diverse subjects from colonial art to the present. He has focused on numerous artist printmakers, including colonial artists John Lewin and Augustus Earle, modernist printmakers Margaret Preston, Thea Proctor and Jessie Traill, and from recent times, political posters groups such as Earthworks Poster Collective and Redback Graphics and artists such as Bea Maddock and Mike Parr.
Roger is committed to providing access to collections and sharing information on prints and printmaking within the context of Australian art in general. In 1999 he established the website prints and printmaking, an access initiative of the Gordon Darling Australia Pacific Print Fund.
This publication is the third volume of his acclaimed series on the history of Australian prints and printmaking.
