Bristol Print Collective

​Bristol Print Collective delivers creative printmaking workshops in pop up venues including art galleries, museums and community spaces. Working across a range of print processes including mono printing, intaglio and relief we combine our different specialisms in print to design unique workshops.  We are passionate about sharing techniques and methods to explore the limitless possibilities of printmaking.

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Tobacco Factory Market Dec 3rd

We had a very festive printmaking session at one of the first Christmas markets held by Tobacco Factory. We spent the afternoon printing botanical Christmas cards using our trusty pasta presses to print textures from foraged leaves. There is still one more Sunday Market left before Christmas, get your last minute gifts there from 11 - 4 on Christmas Eve!

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Tobacco Factory Market Nov 19th

We had the pleasure of hosting a styrofoam printmaking workshop at the Tobacco Factory Sunday Market on November the 19th. We had some very educated participants, who created prints inspired by Greek goddesses and the Romans!

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Bristol to Odense Exhibition

We had a fantastic albeit quick weekend exhibiting our work at the Christmas Steps Gallery from 9th - 12th November. We had two rooms, one was the Denmark room, showing work we had made during our month long residency at Funen Printmaking Studio. The other was our Bristol room, showing work from before and after our visit. It was great chatting to people about our experiences, and how these experiences have shaped the way we work since. 

On the Thursday evening we enticed our friends, family and passer-by’s into the gallery with hot mulled wine and Danish inspired sweet treats, it really was a lovely evening. Thank you to everyone who came along, we really appreciate it! And of course thank you to everyone that visited us over the weekend, we had some really exciting conversations.

Thank you also to Steve Norton, who thankfully took better photos than we did!

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Collography at Cato Press

On October 14th, we were lucky enough to host a workshop at the gorgeous Cato Press studios based in Easton, Bristol. It was also our very first Collagraph Printmaking workshop and it went down a treat! We spent the morning sticking and varnishing textured materials to cardboard plates to create our images. Once they were dry, we inked them up and used the big hand built press to print with.  We had such a great time there, we most certainly will be back!

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Exhibition coming soon!

We are really excited to announce that we are holding at exhibition - next week! 

This exhibition will have two rooms, one showcasing work made here in Bristol, and the other with work we created during our residency in Denmark. You are invited! Come along on the late opening for mulled wine and Danish inspired nibbles, or pop by during the weekend for a cup of tea. 

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End of the Road festival

We like to make the most of our summer. So after arriving home from our Danish adventures at midnight, the next day we were all packed up and ready to go to End of the Road festival, where we spent the weekend printmaking in the forest! 

Festival go-ers foraged for leaves found in the woodland, and created unique monoprints with us using our trusty pasta machines.

A big thank you to Demi and Robin who volunteered with us, we couldn’t have managed without you.

And also, check out our new uniforms! They didn’t stay clean for long I can assure you.

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Denmark Residency round up

Wow! We have had an incredible month in the Funen Print Studio. It was really hard saying goodbye to all of our new friends, who were so generous with their time, sharing their knowledge and skills, letting us nose around their studios, and taking us out on trips when we got cabin fever from frantically printing 10 hours a day, up to our elbows in ink.

Lene and Tilde showing us the beaches of Long Island.

Frank the sculptor in his studio.

Line in her studio telling us how she creates her lovely collograph prints. 

Wielsaw, a real master in stone lithography!

We did our best to cram in as much sight seeing as we could in between printing, visiting old Viking towns like Ribe, making our way around the enormous and gorgeous art gallery in Aarhus, going underground in Copenhagen to see an installation at the Cisterne gallery, driving to the West Coast to visit old abandoned bunkers...but anyway, back to printing!

Jemma found herself some ruins to work from (turns out they are difficult to find in Denmark!). Choosing to focus on the dilapidated industrial buildings that could be found on the harbour, she experimented with etching, stone lithography and monoprinting.

Vicky went on a stamping spree, carving out stamps to create a big jumbled map of Odense. The town is currently undergoing a lot of building work, so Vicky wanted to portray the confusion of all the constantly changing temporary pathways that the builders created every day. She also printed her first ever stone litho!

And Lisa reintroduced herself to etching, getting to grips with soft ground, hard ground and aquatint. She also stamped a pattern onto fabric, inspired by the vast amount of plum trees we picked from in the countryside. She discovered that there was such a thing as a ‘Danish Knot’ within embroidery, so decided to use it to stitch the plums onto the trees.

If you want to see more from our own experiences on the residency, you can find our Instagram accounts by clicking on our names above.

It’s been a whirlwind of an experience, and we couldn’t have done it without your support! Now that we are back, we are busy editioning our prints to send to our lovely Kickstarter supporters. Can we ever thank you enough?

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Studio Time! The past week we’ve been working hard in the studio getting extremely inky in preparation for our exhibition that opens Saturday. For the opening we are delivering an artist talk, where we will be sharing what we have learnt whilst at Funen print studio

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Family Fairy Tale Print Workshop

As part of BPC in Denmark we were invited to deliver a printmaking workshop at the Hans Christian Andersen Museum as part of the week long festival celebrating the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen. We delivered two 2 hour workshops and over 80 children from all over the world took part throughout the day.

We used relief printing with styrofam to make fairy tales books, we also made a fairy tale dice that helped start the children’s imagination to make their stories.

We were surrounded by beautiful murals in this special room in the HCA museum which also helped spark ideas for stories.

Some very proud young printmakers.

We were happy to have such a great turn out and such a diverse mix of families from all over the world who were visiting Odense for the HCA festival.

Every square printed for this poster/concertina book!

Some of our youngest participants who communicated through the language of print!  

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Denmark : Week 1

We can’t believe how quickly the first week has flown by. The studio members couldn’t be more welcoming and happy to share their printing knowledge with us. We have been shown how to use polyester paper to create lithographic style prints, as well as printing the traditional way using a stone. 

We have met with the director of the Hans Christian Anderson Museum to prepare for the upcoming workshops on the 20th August, and have been walking and drawing around the town of Odense, gathering inspiration for the studio.

In between getting to know the studio, we have managed to get around Denmark; visiting the old medieval town of Ribe, the city of Aarhus, the World War Two bunkers on Søndervig Strand and an abandoned theme park in Fyn. 

For the next couple of weeks we will be continuing to work hard in the studio, creating prints to be exhibited at the end of the month. 

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Denmark residency day one! 

After months of planning our residency to Fyns Grafiske we are finally here! Our first day has been spent having a studio induction and familiarising ourselves with the space. The afternoon we spent meandering around the fairy tale city of Odense, searching for inspiration to respond to in the studio over the next few weeks!  

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Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival 

This weekend we had a fun running a printmaking  workshop at Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival! We invited people to carve a lino stamp of things that are important to them relating to unison and the festival. A large range of wonderful stamps were created from Nurses to Fireman, showing a strong love for our public services and beyond! Thank you to everyone who joined us in the unison tent and made our day fun and exciting!  <3

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Botanical Bookmaking

On the 3rd of July we ran a Botanical Bookmaking workshop for the Printing Department at Bristol University as part of a team building activity.

We began by pressing inked up flowers and fresh herbs through pasta rollers. These acted as mini printing presses, so we could print lovely floral textures. Next they folded their prints into concertina fold books, adding hardback covers on each end. Finally they closed the workshop by using rubber letters and precarved lino stamps to create their own narrative within their books.

You could say that they had a bloomin’ marvellous time…..

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Coffee Shop Litho! 

Last night’s kitchen lithography workshop at the Dockyard studios was sooooo much fun! Such wonderful and expressive prints were made just using grease, tinfoil and coke!!! slightly nuts, right?!!

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Kickstarter Countdown!

The countdown has officially begun! We have 10 days left on our campaign.

Thank you so much to everyone who has backed us so far. We are so excited that we managed to reach our target with 18 days to spare! It means so much to us that so many friends, family and print lovers who have seen our project want to support us.  We have started planning to invite an artist from Funen Print Workshop to visit Bristol and connect with other artists and printmakers in Bristol’s arts scene. Spike Island Print Studio and University of the West of England Print Studios at Bower Ashton have agreed to host the Danish artist as part of this international exchange. As part of our month residency in Denmark we are aiming to set up an exhibition at Funen Print Workshop gallery space. When we return to UK we would love to set up a corresponding show with the international exchange artist and exhibit our works alongside their work made in Bristol.

Any additional funds we make above our target can help us with the costs involved in setting up a corresponding show in Bristol as well as the set up costs in our Denmark show. We have plenty more prints to sell and workshops to deliver, check out the pledges and pick your favourite.

Thanks again for everyone who has supported us so far, if you can please share online to other friends and print lovers and spread the love of print!

 http://kck.st/2rZeUcm

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Create Make Club in Bath

On Saturday 17th, Bristol Print Collective found themselves in two places at once! Jemma and Lisa held a workshop at ICIA in Bath, whilst Vicky hosted at Hauser & Wirth in Somerset (more on that later!)

In Bath, we cut out foam shapes and stamped Father’s Day Cards, and also designed and made our own playgrounds, inspired by the upcoming exhibition Brutalist Playground, opening on 28th June. 

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South Bank Arts Trail May 2017

This year we took part in the Southbank Arts Trail and flung open our studio doors for all to come and snoop!

During the trail we ran a super fun Kitchen Lithography Workshop which went down like a storm! Missed It?! Don’t worry we are running another Litho Workshop at the Dockyard on the 10th July!! Email us via [email protected] to book your place.

Thanks to all who came and showed us their support! Mucho love xx