Printing Errors at Akau

I attended the opening for the great little exhibition Printed Errors at Akau Gallery at the beginning of the month, and have been meaning to post about it here for a while. Here is the text from the press release:

As we all know, to err is human. Or, as a character in Jonathan Franzen’s novel “Freedom” says, in retrospect, “mistakes were made”.

In this exhibition, Barbara Balfour has invited thirteen artists who have worked in various forms of print media to respond to the notion of Printing Errors. They include: Janice Carbert, Shannon Gerard, Libby Hague, Micah Lexier, Patrick Mahon, Eric Mathew, Ken Nicol, Lauren Nurse, Dan Olsen, Derek Sullivan, Jeannie Thib, Daryl Vocat, and Joy Walker.

Once one moves beyond the detection of error – the dismay and disappointment of one’s own error or the Schadenfreude of detecting someone else’s – what can be done with it? Above all, can printing errors be interesting?

As someone with a real interest in print media (a little known fact about me is I started a print major at OCAD almost 10 years ago which I subsequently ran kicking and screaming away from, though I've never lost my visceral connection to the process of printing), this was a really fun show to soak up and think about. It was also neat to play spot the error with each piece! I especially enjoyed the work of Ken Nicol (who did the cue card piece pictured above that was not in the show) and Jeannie Thib, and it was nice to see some fellow artists from the DIY art/craft community included as well, Shannon Gerard and Daryl Vocat.

Printing Errors is a part of the international print symposium, Printopolis, sponsored by Open Studio. For more on it, check out this website.