Featured Artist: Martha and Catherine Orbach

To Be Here

Glasgow Print Studio presents the work of Printwalks, a landscape-based printmaking collaboration between Martha and Catherine Orbach. Their practice is centred around walking, charting the seasons, observing a particular place on a particular day. Their process involves walking, sketching, returning to the studio, comparing notes, using papercuts to experiment with composition, and then cutting paper stencils to screenprint the final design. Often hyperlocal, they often repeatedly return to the same place capturing the changes in season, light, perspective. Current work is mostly based in and around Glasgow, Queens Park, the Clyde Estuary and occasional time on Lismore.

Martha and Catherine's collaborative printmaking practice starts with walking and drawing. All their prints come from this. They have been working together for the last 10 years. Starting out as a three generations studio, it's always been a family affair, with various family members helping out.

Since 2017 it has been more long-distance, with Martha now in Glasgow with two young children and Catherine in Hastings, caring for her husband with a long-term illness and her 97-year-old Mum. Time together is a complicated jigsaw of caring obligations to sort.

Their practice is by necessity immediate and focuses on a particular time in a particular place. The place is wherever can be got to in the available time. Each print begins with a walk, some quick sketches, drawings are shared, with paper collages helping create the shared composition. As a collage comes together, paper stencils are cut, and prints are made. They have evolved a lo-tech approach to screen printing - working in all sorts of spaces including gardens, the garage, hospital, woodlands, and kitchen table.

In preparation for sharing this work, they have been working in the print studio. It has transformed what is possible.This show is a celebration of the ability to find time and to be here. An acknowledgement of the importance of `being here' within the landscape.

Catherine trained at Edinburgh College of Art and Martha at Camberwell College of Art and London College of Communication. Their work has been selected for Print International at Ty Pawb, the Print Fair at Hepworth Wakefield, and Alight at The Royal Scottish Academy. The Garden print series was commissioned by The Open Society Foundation, London and explored role of plants and gardens in enabling survivors of torture and organised violence to rebuild their lives in the UK.