ENCOUNTERS WITH THE ORIENT 

ENCOUNTERS WITH THE ORIENT: ÁGUA FORTE/FUKUSHIMA

The Gravura Água-Forte Association emerged out of the union of nine artists in 1999 and the setting up of a small workshop in central Lisbon. Currently, there are 12 members with the group progressing with its activities with a particular focus on raising the profile of etching and interchanges with national and international artists, organising workshops, exhibition and hosting peers from diverse different backgrounds in Japan, Spain, Argentina and Brazil. This constant exchange of knowledge and information has proven of the greatest importance to the development and consolidation of contemporary etching techniques as well as in researching, experimenting and utilising new and less toxic products.

The Fukushima etching group, whose works are integrated into this exhibition, has been particularly concerned with perpetuating the specific characteristics of traditional Japanese techniques, in many aspects different to those usually found in Western art.

In the year that the Gravura Água-Forte Association commemorates its tenth anniversary, the Encounters with the Orient, Água-Forte/Fukushima exhibition represents an important contribution towards raising the profile of traditional etching techniques from both the East and the West.

This exhibition provides continuity to a first exhibition held in 2006 in Fukushima. There, works by etchers from Portugal and Japan were contrasted across their diverse backgrounds, recourse to distinct techniques and resulting in a highly varied range of images.

This second edition seeks to raise the profile of the different and shared facets. There is a further didactic dimension as this event goes beyond introducing to the public the how-to of etching in these two simultaneously so distant and so close worlds but also deciphers many of the techniques that brought about the final works on exhibition here.

Dry point, chisel, scraper, nitric acid, mezzotint, berceau, xylography, ukiyo-e, hangi to, maru bake are terms that we have all in one way or another already heard or encountered but which here may be discovered in their essence, observing and discovering through a new understanding... of the means of producing etchings and engravings.

Sul Gallery, 16 December to 21 February