Fifty: Fifty 30 Years of Drawings and Prints by Paul Croft RE TMP

MOMA Wales, Heol Penrallt, Machynlleth, Powys, SY20 8AJ

12 November 2012 – 12 January 2013

Fifty: Fifty 30 Years of Drawings and Prints by Paul Croft RE TMP – is a major retrospective exhibition that opens at MOMA Wales in Machynlleth on 12 November 2012 and will show until the beginning of January 2013.

Celebrating Croft’s fiftieth birthday in 2013 this exhibition comprises of over 100 drawings and prints spanning thirty years since he was a student at Edinburgh College of Art during the early 1980s. This intriguing exhibition features several key works that show the development of a personal visual language inspired in part by found objects, still life and a lifelong interest in the archaeological and etymological origin of letter forms, alphabets and lexicons.

The exhibition and accompanying catalogue trace this development from initial training and interest in object drawing and traditional still life and then focuses upon the emergence of language in later works that derive from his interest in Japanese calligraphy, Hiragana and Kanji characters, the rock carvings and petroglyphs of the American Southwest to more recent series including ‘Alphabets’ and ‘Les Animaux et Amulets à Musée’.

Paul Croft, born 1963 in Belfast, trained at Edinburgh College of Art 1981-1986 and later qualified as a Master Printer from the world-renowned Tamarind Institute of Lithography in Albuquerque. Croft describes himself as having a tripartite role as artist-printmaker specialising in lithography; educator currently as Head of Printmaking at The School of Art in Aberystwyth and as a professional collaborating printer helping artists to make prints. During the last decade, collaborations have included working with artists David Tress, Mary Lloyd Jones, Marcelle Hanselaar, Wuon Gean Ho, Stuart Pearson Wright and many others.

Croft has written two highly regarded books on Stone Lithography (2001) and Plate Lithography (2003) published by A&C Black Ltd London and in 2007 he curated the influential exhibition Stone • Plate • Grease • Water International Contemporary Lithography that opened at MOMA Wales and then toured to galleries throughout Wales, London and Belfast. He has helped curate several shows of work by Aberystwyth Printmakers and he himself has exhibited widely throughout the UK and abroad in USA, Japan and Hong Kong. In 2008 Croft was elected as a full member of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers in London.