The London Original Print Fair is of generally good quality – more consistent, for example, than the London Art Fair. Here, in chronological order, are eight items I like at Somerset House. The fair isn’t restricted to editions, incidentally: five of these are unique works…
Kobayashi Kiyochika: ‘Sudden Rain at Umewaka Shrine’, c. 1877 – at Japan Print Gallery, London
There is plenty of Japanese art in the Fair. Here, the ukiyo-e woodcut artist Kobayashi Kiyochika (1847 –1915) makes the most of heavy rain as a formal device by avoiding the use of black keyblock outlines as a woman braces her umbrella and a man waits out the storm next to his rickshaw. We also see the shrine and a sign for the rickshaw station.
Georges Braque: ‘Nude Study’, 1907 / 53 – at Gilden’s Art Gallery, London
This is the first print in Braque’s catalogue raisoneé. You can sense it is made on the cusp of cubism, and I like the presence of what I take to be the sea. His best-known nude followed in 1908, but the figure became a rare subject over the rest of his life (1882-1963). Braque made trial proofs only of this etching in 1907-8: this is from an edition of 25 made in 1953.
Paul Nash: ‘The backwater’, 1919 – at Austin / Desmond, London
Pretty typical of Nash’s watercolour technique: a pencil outline emphasises the structure of the overarching trees, and much of the paint is applied relatively dry with restrained use of wash. Though this precedes his introduction of explicitly surreal objects into landscapes, the rhythmic emphasis suggests a presence beyond the straightforwardly natural. And the only-just-post-war date enables the title to be read in escapist manner…
Mel Bochner: ‘Going Out of Business’, 2012 – at Lougher, Bristol
Mel Bochner (1940-2025) died last month, adding a mournful extra dimension to his ‘Going Out Of Business’. This is a monoprint with oil paint, collage, engraving and embossment from his ‘thesaurus’ series, which foregrounds painterly concerns while leaving us to ponder the high and low associations of related words and phrases – they tend to start formally and move towards slang. Beyond that, Bochner said he was interested in ‘how language structures thought and thought in turn structures what we see.’
Sue Webster: ‘A Brief History of My Life Through Siouxsie and The Banshees’, 2023 – at Tin Man Art, London / Hampshire
This silkscreen edition of 25 looks at first like a conventional mind map – but proves to be an innovative way of setting out how the first four albums of Siouxsie Sioux’s seminal punk band, and their influences, impacted on Webster. Can you name the albums without looking? That’s right: ‘The Scream’, which I remember buying in 1978; ’Join Hands’, 1979; ‘Kaleidoscope’, 1980; and ‘Juju’, 1981.
Susie Hamilton: ‘Passenger’, 2024 at Paul Stolper, London
Susie Hamilton uses the semi-controlled accidents of her materials to ‘attack’ her figures, so capturing the uncanny drama of something known morphing towards something unknown. This monotype is from her series of people seated on the Underground, a logical subject given the literary tradition (Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton, Eliot…) of using the underworld as a site of metamorphosis.
Minyoung Kim: ‘Burning’ 2025 – Taymour Grahne Projects, London
Did the cat knock the candle over? One from a set of unique pencil drawings by the London-based Korean in which cartoonish expressions find their way into otherwise naturalistic animals and inanimate objects alike. Here the open and humanoid eye of a presumably dead fish adds an absurdity to the more disturbing implied drama of a fire to come.
Rachel Kneebone: ‘Medallion’, 2025 – White Cube – London, Hong Kong, Paris, New York, Seoul
White Cube’s room may have been the best – fresher, indeed, than the gallery’s typical Frieze stand. I’d have happily highlighted Louise Giovanelli, Julie Curtiss or Mona Hatoum as well as this group of what are effectively unique porcelain sculptures by Rachel Kneebone. They’re from a set of 25 released for the fair. ‘A smooth scrying orb’, says the gallery, ‘is framed by cascading ribbon-like folds and diminutive curls suggestive of roses’. And do ask to look at the quite differently ornate backs…
