Edinburgh Printmakers’s Annual member’s exhibition Print Culture celebrates the past, present and future of printmaking

Edinburgh Printmakers presents Print Culture: Castle Mills Members Show 6 this winter, reflecting on the past, present and future of printmaking as Edinburgh Printmakers approaches its 60th Anniversary year in 2027.

Opening on 13 November 2026 and running through to 18 December 2026, audiences can browse and buy art from a selection of artists who call the city’s centre for printmaking home. Spanning a range of mediums, including screenprinting, lithography, etching, relief and 3D mixed-media pieces, the exhibition includes work by 117 of the 381 Studio Members who make work in one of Europe’s largest printmaking workshops.

Each year, Artist Members are invited to respond to a collective theme, encouraging the artistic community to create new work for the exhibition. This year’s theme - Print Culture - reflects the role of print within everyday life, visual culture and artistic practice. These include reflections on the history and future of print processes, the influence of digital technologies, activism, reproduction, or the presence of print in public and domestic spaces.

Speaking ahead of the exhibition Edinburgh Printmakers Chief Executive Janet Archer said: 

“Fine art printmaking makes a major contribution to the visual arts. As long ago as the 15th century, highly established artists were using printmaking techniques to great effect through working with printmaking as a novel art form, which introduced technology as a tool for artistic production. Over the past 6 decades, Edinburgh Printmakers has played a significant role in supporting contemporary printmakers and artists to continue to experiment by providing access to specialist equipment, materials and learning.”

“For our sixth annual members’ exhibition, we asked member printmakers to consider where printmaking sits within today’s cultural landscape and where it might go next. We’ve encouraged members to think broadly about the role of print in everyday life, visual culture and artistic practice. This includes reflections on the influence of print processes, digital, activism, reproduction, and print presence in public and domestic spaces."

"Our selection panel included Ken Duffy, founder Director of Edinburgh Printmakers, who led the organisation for 19 years.  We were all highly impressed by the quality of work on offer and as a selling exhibition look forward to giving festive shoppers an opportunity to buy unique gifts while supporting Scotland’s printmaking community.”

The resulting exhibition of 126 artworks sees artists showcase works across a range of mediums with many layering printmaking techniques across a single artwork. Experimentation is at the heart of printmaking and Print Culture also features artworks across different mediums including clay, sculptural works in paper and even printmaking using plant leaves. From personal moments to public historical references, the exhibition shares the impact of the artform and the power of a creative community centered around the vibrant studio space at Castle Mills. Visitors to the exhibition will see artworks drawing influence from different artforms such as painting, graphic design, animation, photography and sculpture. 

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Highlights from the exhibition - include Carla Smith’s Omotesandō, a large four-layer screenprint, created originally from a photograph. Taken on a film camera whilst in Japan, the image looks out of a shopping centre in Omotesandō, which has a geometric mirror entrance, reflecting the view from the street in overlapping angles. The CMYK screenprint, printed on Somerset Velvet Newsprint Grey, offers a moment of stillness in a busy city where green spaces and places of rest feel rare. The image was taken whilst Carla was working on the interviews for the ‘KIZUNA’ project, which explores community through printmaking.

Martha Schlegel is presenting Family tree I, a chlorophyll print, using an alternative process that uses green leaves as its canvas. When exposed to sunlight, the uncovered chlorophyll fades, leaving behind a green imprint of a stencil placed on the leaf’s surface. Family tree I was printed in June 2026 on a hosta leaf from her garden in Musselburgh and is the first piece in a series about Martha’s family (tree). The print depicts Martha’s siblings and herself (in the middle) at Easter in 1989.

In Uprooted, Senada Borcilo explores visual language as a way of reflecting on history and her own sense of belonging as a British-Bosnian woman. 

While studying sculpture at Edinburgh College of Art in 1995, Senada created life-size figures of the Three Graces, representing Bosnia’s three main religious communities: Muslim, Orthodox Christian and Catholic. She then burned the figures on the college grounds, while Leigh Charlton photographed the different stages of the burning. Thirty years later, she has created the screenprint originally intended, combining these photographs with the flag of the former Yugoslavia. The burning evokes destruction and loss, while the flag represents a country and shared identity that no longer exists. Speaking about the artwork, Senda said: “Screenprinting felt particularly appropriate: its layers and repeated transfers echo the way memory is carried, revisited and transformed over time.”

Mary Walters’ An Icy Cathedral in Disko Bay (3) is a digital print, one of a limited edition of 8, depicting a photograph of an iceberg in Disko Bay, Ilulissat, Greenland, layered with a unique monoprint created in situ, and in response to the overwhelming awe experienced by witnessing this natural wonder at very close quarters. Speaking about the print she said: “I have tried to juxtapose the enormity of the time to create an iceberg of this size, with the immediacy of being almost able to touch it. Thus it becomes not only a photographic print of the berg itself, but also my contemporary response to witnessing its presence.”

Printmaker Lucy Jones is presenting Compass Direction, a multi plate, collagraph print with chine-collé. One of a very varied edition of 15 prints, each one with its own unique identity - made with the same plates but different colour palettes, inks and collage papers including old sheet music, envelopes, brown paper. Speaking about the print Lucy said; “Compass Direction was created during a long day of adjustments and re-assessments. But that’s all part of the process, when colours and materials are combined, controlled to a certain degree thanks to testing and learning and doing a technique, then put under some blankets and run through a press… and somewhere in there the magic happens, the weird and wonderful layered marks and effects are produced. A composition of compass drawn circles and torn paper shapes – a balance and dance of control and repetition with chaos and variation, and very many different marks.” 

All artworks in Print Culture are for sale, and make for individual and unique gifts this winter. All artworks are also eligible for purchase through the Own Art scheme.