As part of Print Network Ireland’s professional development series.
Location: Black Church Print Studio
Date: 19th October 2024
Presenter: Sean McGuill
Schedule: Full day 10am -5pm
Masterclass Description
This one-day masterclass guided participants through the hydroprinting process, which transfers printed images onto 3D objects. They will learned to apply ink onto a dissolvable film and transfer it onto various materials through water immersion. Hydroprinting, also known as water transfer printing, works on materials like wood, glass, plastic, and clay and is compatible with printing methods such as screen printing, inkjet, and lithography. In this course, participants had the opportunity to print their own images onto sculptural or found objects, or work with provided examples, learning the hydroprinting process from start to finish.
About Sean McGuill
Sean McGuill is an artist and printmaker from Dundalk, Co. Louth, currently based in Cork, Ireland.
He specializes in hydroprinting, a technique that transfers printed imagery onto three-dimensional objects. McGuill integrates traditional printmaking methods with contemporary technologies, working with materials such as wood, glass, plastic, and clay.McGuill is a member of Cork Printmakers and the National Sculpture Factory, working with various processes such as screen print, monotype, painting, and mixed media. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including the 190th RHA Annual Exhibition and the Halftone Print Fair in Dublin.
He graduated from the Limerick School of Art Design in 2018 with a degree in Printmaking & Contemporary Practice. After graduation, he completed a three-month residency at An Táin Arts Centre, Dundalk, and held his first solo exhibition, The Great Filter, at Droichead Arts Centre, Drogheda, in November 2019.
His work has received several awards, including the Arts Council Covid-19 Response Award, the John Shinnors Selection at the 2017 LSAD Drawing Awards, the Limerick Lace Drawing Award in 2016, and the LSAD Drawing Awards in 2015. He was also shortlisted for the 2017 Hennessy Portrait Prize for his self-portrait, which was included in the exhibition at the National Gallery of Ireland.
Artist Statement
My work draws upon cultural artefacts, everyday objects and found imagery from the internet, as a means to understand the role of images in an overly saturated and constantly changing visual culture. Often focusing on opposing forces between order and chaos, factual and absurd, analogue and digital, or abstract and figurative, my work compares the ideologies and aesthetics of seemingly random image systems. The source material is deconstructed, cropped, and layered using various processes including expanded printmaking, painting, digital and collage, sometimes in combination. This approach echoes the incongruous variety of online imagery and considers ‘slow’ processes such as drawing as an antithesis to the knee-jerk reactions and viral trends that are prevalent in today’s media landscape, in which images are consumed and discarded at an equal rate. Through this approach, my practice aims to question the limits of online dissemination and reproduction, and the role in which context plays in the understanding of meaning, while allowing space to develop an experimental visual language exploring mark-making and materiality.
Instagram @seanmcguillart
