AICCM Symposium 2006, Conservation of Paper, Books and Photographic Materials. Post-prints and Posters. 19-21 April 2006, Wellington, New Zealand. p18-35
Abstract
Margaret Preston (1875g1963), Australia’s most celebrated early modernist, created innovative woodblock prints from the 1920s which remain amongst the most popular of all Australian artists’ work. She was the first serious artist advocate of Aboriginal art, yet her appropriation of Aboriginal imagery to the cause of modernism contributed to the controversy, and the ongoing significance, of her work. Preston, notably in her experimental monotypes of 1946, her use of Masonite as a modern material for printmaking and her dynamic use of the stencil technique, produced exceptional decorative landscape prints towards the end of her long working life.Preston consciously demonstrated the process of craft in her art, while the form and content extended the viewer’s imagination. The deliberate choice of materials and techniques produced a synergy to her works of art, encapsulating the practical and intellectual complexity of Margaret Preston.