John Loane is one of Australia's pre-eminent master printers, one who has collaborated with a whole host of leading Australian artists but who in recent years has been rediscovering his own voice as an artist.

The prints which give this exhibition its title, Ceci n'était une gravure à l'eau forte and Existential Vicissitudes II (ceci n'était jamais une gravure à l'eau forte), in their titles involve a somewhat heavy-handed pun on René Magritte's classic painting of a pipe, which bears the inscription Ceci n'est pas une pipe (this is not a pipe). Loane, by declaring that his etchings are not etchings, or in one instance, have never been an etching, like his surrealist predecessor, employs a twist of irony to question the nature of his art object.

The works in this exhibition are large, imposing and had their starting point as etchings. These etchings have then been splashed on, dribbled on and in other ways manipulated with black, silver and coloured etching inks to create quite wondrous rippling surfaces. Tantalisingly, fragments of the etchings in places are allowed to peer through the layers of ink suggesting the sense of layering in the development of an image, which is so intrinsic to printmaking.

The works are spectacular, in a dark French sort of way, where forms battle for existence within an explosion of marks. The densely worked surfaces are akin to a battlefield, one where there are no victors, but where the trace of conflict scars the surface. Although one may be reminded of the surfaces encountered in the work of Allan Mitelman and Sam Francis, but this is largely coincidental, and these artists are best considered as fellow travellers, rather than one building on the work of the other.

There are several spectacular pieces in the exhibition, including Untitled (No 11), The shallow, the deep (No 12) and Existential Vicissitudes II (ceci n'était jamais une gravure à l'eau forte) (No 6). There is a sense of drama inherent in many of the works and much is pervaded by a sense of darkness with something of a Samuel Beckett-like view on existence. Despite the endless punning in the titles with references to Magritte, French cinema, Jackson Pollock and the lyrics from Paul Kelly's Our Sunshine, the genre mood of the exhibition is sombre. The work, at least on one level, is about existence and the struggle for existence, one where dynamic explosive energy and a surface tension are momentarily brought into equilibrium.

This exhibition is a stunning and major achievement and after decades of playing the role of midwife and guiding artists to realise their mark in the form of glorious prints, John Loane has created a strikingly powerful and memorable exhibition.