Fifty: Fifty: 30 Years of Drawing and Prints by Paul Croft RE TMP

Fifty: Fifty 30 Years of Drawings and Prints by Paul Croft RE TMP - which opened at MOMA Wales, Machynlleth (12.11.12 - 12.01.13)  is the first major retrospective exhibition of this artist's work since the year 2000. 

Comprising of over 100 drawings and prints, spanning 30 years since Croft was a student at Edinburgh College of Art during the early 1980s, this exhibition examines some of the common themes, processes and techniques of drawing and printmaking that have inspired and motivated the artist throughout this period. Featuring several key works, the exhibition shows the development of personal visual language - inspired in part - by an ongoing fascination for the object in its many varying manifestations - from humble still life, found object, flotsam and jetsam to the museum artefact; and also by a lifelong interest in the archaeological and etymological origin of letter forms, alphabets and lexicons. 

The exhibition and accompanying catalogue charts this development from initial training in still life and object drawing and then focuses upon the emergence of language in later works that derive from interest in Japanese calligraphy, Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji characters, the rock carvings and petroglyphs of the American Southwest to more recent series including ‘Alphabets’ and ‘Les Animaux et Amulets à Musée’, which examine the symbolic importance of objects in the development of language pictorially as in the etymological formation of characters and alphabets. 

Incorporating examples of etching, screen-printing and lithography the exhibition also examines the transition and translation of motif from drawing to one medium to another and also includes series of prints that explore the interface between digital and traditional analogue processes of stone and plate lithography - evidenced in the development of digital tusche wash and computer generated drawing printed photo-mechanically using plate lithography.