It is a must-see for all sort and letterpress followers on the market: The veteran and influential English printer Alan Kitching is among the few figures within the commerce who has made the transition from a time when letterpress printing was a vital a part of mass media to a present second wherein a lot of the attraction of this method lies, on one hand, within the exploration of its plastic limits and, on the opposite, within the preservation of printing heritage. Kitching represents, on the similar time, the custom and the modernity of letterpress. He’ll open an exhibition, London’s Constructing Blocks at GRAGRA Gallery & Letterpress Studio, Madrid on March 28, 2025. The present explores the transmission of heritage and the craft of letterpress printing. Alongside his work, it should additionally function items by three designers that Kitching mentored and influenced: Michelle Dwyer, Theo Hersey, and Christian Granados.
By way of a succinct choice of works, Alan Kitching: London’s Constructing Blocks serves as a tribute not solely to his profession however to the previous and current of London printing. On this proposal curated by Andrés Oliva, movable sort is known as the opposite constructing blocks (constituent parts) on which the trendy metropolis of London and the English cultural id have been constructed.
The centrepiece of the exhibition are three typographic maps: Printing in London: 1476-1995 (1995), Broadside 10, Dr. Samuel Johnson (2010) and Mr. Kitching’s Travels (2012). These three panels, typographical schematisations of the topography of London, mark plenty of landmarks in English literature and its e-book trade. Additionally included is a poster for Hamlet, commissioned by the Globe Theatre and in the end unused, and the primary of the Broadside panels, a quintessential print of Kitching’s fashion.
Alongside Alan’s work, the exhibition contains works made for the event by two of his closest present collaborators, Michelle Dwyer and Theo Hersey, younger printers whom he has mentored. The primary will function a mural (The British Tongue) celebrating numerous idioms from the English capital that, as a New Yorker, have caught her consideration. The second will function a typographic specimen from The Typography Workshop, a workshop that Kitching began within the late Nineteen Eighties and which Hersey continues at the moment. To finish the set, a poster made for the exhibition by the three designers talked about above and Christian Granados will probably be offered.
The exhibition will probably be open to the general public at GRAGRA from 28 March to 30 June.
