Etched in the sun II at Nancy Sever is a triumph of ethical Indigenous printmaking

Reviewer: Sasha Grishin

Collaboration has become fashionable in the arts today and it seems to be almost irrelevant that an artist may not have physically touched the piece of art exhibited under the artist's name.

After all, the artist had the idea and the anonymous artisan or fabricator merely translated this idea into a physical form. Some maverick artists, like Fiona Hall, manufacture most of their artworks themselves. Where she does collaborate, as for example with the Tjanpi Desert Weavers, Hall insists that all of her collaborators are listed by name and in the same font size alongside her.

In printmaking, collaboration has a very long history, as frequently the techniques are complex, demanding and very time-consuming. The great Albrecht Dürer, whose art lies at the beginning of the history of printmaking, employed collaborators to do some of the painstaking work in carving the more mechanical sections of his blocks and, in all likelihood, in printing his superb woodblock prints and engravings.

By the 19th century there was a strange development in the role of the professional collaborative printer. Some artists, like James McNeill Whistler, argued that for a print to be authentic every little bit had to be done by the artist to reflect his genius, and the printing and wiping of the plate bore witness to this development. Others continued to use master printers, but as the fashion with the art buying public was for work done solely by the artist, the names of the printers were rarely mentioned.

Auguste Clot, one of the greatest lithographic printers of the time, who gave birth to works by Cézanne, Degas, Redon, Gauguin, Bonnard and Toulouse-Lautrec, was almost totally invisible and was rarely publicly acknowledged.

In Indigenous art that has involved the services of a master printer, there is a need for a new perspective to this whole question of collaboration. If Cézanne employed the services of Clot, he did it within a tradition of art with which he was intimately familiar. For many indigenous artists, printmaking is, at least initially, a completely alien idea. Some, of course, did receive training within an art school, Bunduk Marika and Judy Watson quickly come to mind, but the master printer who visits remote communities is introducing artists to a totally new medium.

Basil Hall has been a master printer, collaborating with artists, for over 30 years. Initially Canberra-based and working out of Studio One, subsequently he moved to Darwin, where he has collaborated regularly with indigenous artists. In 2012, he relocated to Braidwood and presently divides his time between studios in Braidwood and Canberra. This exhibition is a cross-section of his collaborative activities, mainly with Indigenous artists, but also contains a number of high profile non-Indigenous artists, including Garry Shead and Jenny Sages. The overwhelming impression is that of enormous variety where, as the collaborative printer, he made every attempt to give the artists their own voice.

It is a very densely hung exhibition, with highlights including the huge Desert Mob panel, where all of the woodblock prints out of the portfolio are presented as a huge framed installation. Marika Baker's untitled etching from 2009 is mesmerising in its intensity and there are great prints by Shirley, Lena Nyadbi, Mabel Juli, Peggy Patrick and Gordon Barney. It is a bit like a stock show, with work from different periods – some are old, some less old; some are edition prints, and some studio printer's proofs.

What I find interesting about this exhibition is the whole idea of introducing a new art medium to artists who work within very different traditions. To accommodate artists from remote communities, Basil Hall has adopted a number of specific strategies.

What most of them have in common is that he travels to the artists, rather than waiting for them to come to him. Some communities have already acquired printmaking equipment and Hall can work with the artists on the spot, proofing the images in the community. On other occasions, he will bring a matrix for the artist to work on and then negotiate printing of proof prints in his studio and taking them back for the artists to approve. There is integrity in his process, and much time is devoted to trying to determine which printmaking form will best suit the artist's temperament and skills base. Then the artist will be introduced to relief printmaking, intaglio work, silkscreens or occasionally lithography.

The integrity in the collaborative process shines through in the integrity of the finished prints on display, where the artist owns the image and the process, while the collaborative printer is named as the technical facilitator who brought the work to fruition.

Basil Hall is one of the heroes of ethical Indigenous printmaking and the Canberra art community has already warmly embraced this exhibition.