Workshop: The Kenneth Tyler Collection

"Workshop" tells the story of Kenneth Tyler--one of the twentieth century's preeminent master printers, publishers, and arts educators--who, after establishing himself in 1965, set about to engage some of the most creative minds of the postwar era. Tyler's is a story of brilliant success built on that rare entrepreneurial mix of technical wizardry, perseverance, and drive. The other half of this story is that of a young and bold National Gallery of Australia. Positioned on the other side of the globe, the Gallery actively pursued works of the highest caliber, in the development of a collection born in the very same era that witnessed the stratospheric rise of the print. Together, Tyler and the Gallery have amassed a collection that charts a revolution in the field--a redefinition of the print into an entirely new species of a hybrid nature and often enormous scale. Printmaking produced some of the most iconic works of the postwar era.

This publication spans the four decades and four workshops of the master printer Kenneth Tyler. Accompanying a scholarly essay written by Dr. Jane Kinsman are 77 texts that focus on a myriad of artists and their printmaking projects--from Bauhaus legends, Abstract Expressionists, leading Abstract artists and the stars of the Pop age, to several artists who we are about to discover in more depth--all of them engaged with the Tyler workshops to produce work in an astounding variety of form. Through prints as series, sets and portfolios, to prints as folding screens, lead reliefs, vacuum-formed plastics, prints that are part industrial manufacturing, part embossing and metallic collage, prints as sprayed paper pulp, prints measuring ten metres and prints in three dimensions that take leave of the wall completely--here is the postwar print in all of its multifaceted possibilities and technical innovation.

Tyler chose a dedicated and highly skilled team of printers and workshop staff who each played a key role in the realisation of artists' projects. Some of those past members of the Tyler Graphics team reminisce about behind-the-scenes insights into the centrality of collaboration to the workshop and the workings of the print studio.