From Hockney to Himid: 60 years of British Printmaking at the Pallant Gallery

 by Sam Lewis

Recently I visited the Pallant Gallery in Chichester to see their new exhibition ‘Hockney to Himid’ about the evolution of printmaking in Britain. The exhibition featured key works from a wide range of artists, styles and techniques from the past 60 years. From wood engravings and etchings to lithographs and screenprints, the exhibition showed how printmaking enabled artists to innovate with new media.

Emerging from the post-war period, printmaking became much more popular among artists and transitioned from relatively unknown and specialist to a widely adopted medium by some of the foremost names in contemporary art such as Henry Moore and Tracey Emin. The exhibition was set out in chronological order, showing how Britain emerged from the postwar years in the early 1960s, and navigated the social changes of the 1970s and 1980s. This evolution was made clear in the layout, with rooms having distinct themes and aesthetics, and grouping similar movements in the same room. However, some rooms actively contrasted the works, showing the versatility of printmaking, and emphasising the social change occurring during the 1970s and onwards.

While many prints in the exhibition demonstrate the evolution of printmaking as an artform, such as early etchings by David Hockney while he was still studying at the Royal College of Art, many others tackle social issues, for instance Lubaina Himid’s ‘Birdsong Held Us Together’, a response to the isolation of Lockdown. This was what I enjoyed most about the exhibition, as it displayed both the evolution of the medium and of the artistic expression through the medium.

The variety of the exhibition was another key reason I enjoyed it, as usually exhibitions focus on one artist or movement; this exhibition featured an entire medium. It hosted works from artists of many different backgrounds from rural Devon to urban Manchester. These works were taken from collections across the country, some of them from the Pallant’s own collection of 2500 prints, as well as some from outside the gallery, such as Barbara Hepworth’s prints from the Hepworth Museum in Cornwall.

Overall, I enjoyed the exhibition as it made me realise how powerful and versatile printmaking is as a medium, and inspired me to perhaps use it for my own art projects in the future.