Irish Printmakers in the Age of Digital Reproduction

Abstract

Contemporary approaches to visual culture acknowledge that to separate the work of art from the wider context of its creation is to ignore much of the work’s meaning. To work in a medium historically linked to technology and mechanical reproduction is, I believe, to interrogate the potential of the new. Throughout the Modern period, new technologies challenged the position of the handmade art object. In the age of digital reproduction, where now does print find itself? Of course, it is not only technology that disrupts the continuity of tradition. All manner of societal, economic or environmental changes may be reflected in the artworks created in their midst. In my lifetime, none have been so disruptive as the recent Covid-19 pandemic.

This paper will highlight the changes in my practice and those of artists Aoife Scott, Katsu Yuasa and Colin Martin that were entirely influenced by technology during the pandemic. The works we have all created since the pandemic have been shaped aesthetically, conceptually and in some cases practically by restrictions. The ubiquity of digital technology had of course impacted most contemporary artists long before the pandemic. The speed and development of this increasingly visible influence seem, however, to have grown exponentially since Covid-19 made our usual modes of production impossible.