Artists Statement:
The revolution in print has already passed with the invention of the press by Johann Gutenberg back in 1500. Since then many more revolutions have passed and will keep passing. From Scribes hand writing bibles to the 10,000,000 books, which are now printed per year around the world. So what does this have to do with the words Advertising Mass Media Printmaking? Artists in Australia returned to the etching and lithographic presses in the 1960's to experiment with the use of the print medium. It was about this time the word printmaking started as a departmental name for courses in print technology and theory in Australia. 40 years later printmaking changes its name to print media. Since the 1960's there has been a large group of artists who have used the ideas of mass media and production in their work. Today artists use so many different types of print technology it would be hard to list them all in this short note. Print technology in digital form gives artists in their own home access to filmmaking, publishing, large-scale print and web sites. So who are the big guns in printmaking in Australia? Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer? They own about 70% of the mass media, they can make or break politicians. But only as a way of making large sums of capital to support their respective organisations. But as history shows even Gutenberg accepted the fact that large scale production means giving the masses what they want and of course finance. Is printmaking artistic/personal and advertising commercial/non-personal? Printmaking has the luxury of being the critic of the masses, but advertising has the luxury of selling to the masses. The words `Advertising' and `Printmaking' associated combine critical challenge to the words as one unit. The words together become a confrontation of opposite meaning, with the domains and boundaries blurring into one. So what if commercial artists and fine artists exchanged ideas, it's already happened. Today's media and fine artists use combinations of images, words and text in millions of different forms. Where the problem lies is in the financial side of media. When advertising becomes a larger icon than any other idea of the image, where humans strive to fall into the image of advertising then this is where we lose the idea of the personal. Advertising has come a long way with product placement in program formats. Listen to commercial morning radio, every second sentence is an advertisement. In other words the percentage of advertising used legally is the same as usual but placement within a program or talk back has increased. To challenge the use of advertising I want to combine the word itself into the context of the word printmaking using a barrage of advertising printed material behind the statement “Revolution 2004 Advertising Mas Media Printmaking” The word advertising becomes personal, as I have used it in personal terms as an artist. Directing the aim of the word advertising at printmaking the word becomes personal. If advertising is going to be the future of conditioning, then let the experience of the word be personal. I for one don't believe advertising for a minute, well maybe sometimes. But in the context of communication it has grown to such a scale that finding our own personal experience in the future will be the problem.

Artists Statement:
Printed image on acid free paper relating to the theme of Revolution, its meaning to me and my perceptions of others' meanings.