Marking the artist’s first major monographic museum exhibition in the United States, the Davis Museum at Wellesley College is pleased to present Christiane Baumgartner: Another Country, an in-depth introduction to and survey of the artist’s work at mid-career. Curated by Lisa Fischman, Ruth Gordon Shapiro ’37 Director at the Davis, the exhibition features 55+ works completed within the last decade, including several of the magnificent monumental woodcuts—hand-carved blocks and hand-printed impressions—for which the artist is best known, along with photo-engravings, aquatints, and photogravures executed in series.

Baumgartner works at the intersection of old and new media to expand the conceptual and technical capacities of printmaking—to push beyond the traditional boundaries of the medium’s expectations and precedents. Sourcing images from cinema and television, or from her own photographs and videos, Baumgartner’s images defy print convention. Often monumental in scale, or undertaken in extended series, the work is about speed and transmission, about human sight and its elusive capture, about cultural memory and modes of representation.

Born in 1967 in Leipzig, Germany, Christiane Baumgartner worked as a skilled typesetter at a publishing house before entering the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig (Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig). During her school years, she founded Carivari Artist Press, and was an artist-in-residence at the Edinburgh Printmakers Workshop in Scotland. She began independent study with renowned graphic artist and wood engraver Karl-Georg Hirsch in Leipzig in 1997; that same year, she entered the Royal College of Art, London where she completed her MFA in Printmaking in 1999. She has since received many honors and awards, including the 2010 commission of Ladywood, an installation combining print and video elements, by the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in collaboration with The Art Fund, UK and the 2011 commission of Illumination by the Schweizerische Graphische Gesellschaft in Zurich, Switzerland. From 2014 to 2016, Baumgartner was Visiting Professor for Printmaking at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig. Her work is held in over thirty public collections worldwide, including the Albertina, Vienna; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris; and the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Baumgartner was recently awarded the prestigious Mario Avati Printmaking Prize by the Académie des beaux-arts, Paris, which staged her first solo exhibition in France in 2015. Baumgartner lives and works in Leipzig, where she has maintained a studio at the Leipziger Spinnerei since 1995.

A fully illustrated catalogue, published and distributed by Hirmer Verlag, contributes new scholarship on the artist: essays by Claire C. Whitner, Director of Curatorial Affairs and James A. Welu Curator of European Art at the Worcester Art Museum, and the former Assistant Director of Curatorial Affairs and Senior Curator of Collections at the Davis Museum, and Richard S. Field, retired Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the Yale University Art Gallery, contextualize Baumgartner’s work in relation to German printmaking traditions; and an interview with the artist by the exhibition curator, Lisa Fischman, considers Baumgartner’s practice at mid-career.

Prism Print International has organized, in collaboration with Clifford Chance of London, the exhibition PRISM: KHOROS (curated by John Read) which includes 40 graphic works and engravings by 17 international artists members of the Prism.

From 24 September until 2 November 2018 at Clifford Chance, 10 Upper Bank Street, London E14 5JJ.
The Exhibition can be visited by appointment by contacting nigel.frank@cliffordchance.com

Catalog www.prismprintinternational.com

IN-sight is a group of artists who have a passion for exploring and extending the possibilities and boundaries of printmaking. For the past two years they have been creating imaginative new work in response to obscure objects and hidden treasures they’ve encountered in the Museum’s stores. This exhibition showcases their art alongside some of the diverse artifacts from the Museum’s collection that sparked each artist’s inspiration and curiosity.

IN-sight artists got together at the University of the West of England after studying for an MA in multi-disciplinary printmaking. ‘Into the Light’ will be the group’s third exhibition together but their first themed show. The artists are: Sue Brown, Coo Geller, Sarah Salaman, Jane Sasanow, Wendy Rhodes and Kate Wallis.

Sally Annett’s work, inspired by the archive collection at Bletchley Park, investigates both the historical content of the archive and the material nature of the diverse items within it. Drawing on themes of internationalism and the fragmentation of information, her works reference many questions that still persist: the many staff whose names are not recorded, the fragmented intercepted messages that were the Codebreakers’ raw material, their scribbled notes and workings-out, the thousands of individual parts of machines such as the Bombe and, above all, the layers of secrecy.

This exhibition is in parallel with an exhibition at Wrest Park of printmaking and artworks by Sally Annett, inspired by the collections of English Heritage. Wrest Park houses the famous Zuber and Chinese wallpapers and the entire collection of wallpapers for English Heritage with over 1500 examples. Over the summer there are lectures, demonstrations and workshops running at both places. The exhibition at Wrest Park runs from 15 June – 21 July.

Annett has worked in collaboration with Susan Johanknecht and La Livresse and the project is supported by Arts Council England.