APW George Collie Memorial Print Award

The APW George Collie Memorial Print Award is a prestigious annual award established to acknowledge and celebrate Artists who have made significant and enduring contributions to the field of Australian Printmaking.

The 2023 APW George Collie Memorial Print Award was awarded to Allan Mitelman

• Allan Mitelman is an Australian painter, printmaker and educator who arrived in Australia from Poland in 1953. Over a span of 30 years, he has worked with APW printers to produce 24 editions of intaglio and lithographic prints. Allan taught at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School / Victorian College of the Arts for over 40 years. In 2004, the National Gallery of Victoria held a major survey of Mitelman's works on paper, which also toured to the Art Gallery of New South Wales. His works are represented in many collections including the Museum of Modern Art (New York), The British Museum (London) and many state and regional art galleries and museums throughout Australia.

   

The 2022 APW George Collie Memorial Print Award was awarded to Hertha Kluge-Pott

• Hertha Kluge-Pott is a long-established and highly regarded printmaker. Since her arrival in Australia from Germany in 1958, Kluge-Pott has devoted herself to a career in printmaking, both as an artist and educator. She was a pivotal figure in the resurgence of Australian printmaking in the 1950s and 1960s. She established a workshop in Melbourne at the Melbourne State College in 1968 where she taught until 1978, lectured at RMIT between 1979 and 1994, and at the Victorian College of the Arts in 1995. Kluge-Pott was a foundation member of the Print Council of Australia and an APW committee member in the 1980’s. Her work is represented in all of Australia’s significant public art collections and institutions. 

The 2021 APW George Collie Memorial Print Award was awarded to Ann Newmarch OAM 

• Ann Newmarch OAM (1945-2022) was a celebrated and highly influential feminist, activist, artist, and educator who consistently pushed the boundaries of the print medium to develop an accessible art form. Newmarch was a co-founder of the politically active Progressive Art Movement in 1974, where she produced political posters, and, in 1976, of the Adelaide Women’s Art Movement where she continued to make art about social issues. She was the first woman artist to be subject of a major retrospective at the Art Gallery of South Australia in 1997. She was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia for her services to the Arts in 1989 and her work is held by all major public and private collections in Australia.

The 2020 APW George Collie Memorial Print Award was awarded to Deborah Klein and Barbara Hanrahan

• Deborah Klein is one of Australia’s leading contemporary artists / printmakers, specialising in the field of relief printing. Her practice encompasses painting, drawing, printmaking, and book art. She has exhibited regularly since 1987 and was the subject of a major survey exhibition, ‘Deborah Klein: Out of the Past 1995-2007’, which toured to Castlemaine Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Ballarat, Warrnambool Art Gallery, and Deakin University Art Gallery in 2008. Her work is represented in numerous public collections. In 2009 Klein founded Moth Woman Press, through which she continues to publish limited-edition books and zines. Klein has a long history with APW, having produced 55 editions of relief prints in the APW print studios since 1990.  

• Barbara Hanrahan (1939 -1991) is remembered as one of Australia’s most highly esteemed printmakers, writers and educators. She began printmaking in 1960, experimenting with printing techniques such as screen printing, etching, relief printing, woodblocks and linocuts. She was a member of the Australian Women’s Art Movement and the Australian Women's Art Register. Although she was based in Adelaide, Hanrahan visited APW on several occasions and produced 25 editions of etchings, lithographs, and relief prints in the APW print studios.

The 2019 APW George Collie Memorial Print Award was awarded to Alun Leach-Jones and Kevin Lincoln

• Alun Leach-Jones (1937 - 2017) is recognised as one of Australia's most prominent abstract artists. His work is held in numerous collections in Australia and overseas, including the Museum of Modern Art and Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum and British Museum in London, the National Gallery of Australia and Australian state galleries. As a mentor and teacher, Leach-Jones was responsible for fostering the careers of many younger Australian artists. Between 1986 and 2016, he produced 26 limited edition fine art prints with printers at APW including etchings, lithographs and linocuts.

• Kevin Lincoln is a Melbourne-based artist who has maintained a strong commitment to printmaking, alongside his painting and drawing practice, throughout his career. Since 1983 Lincoln has worked with APW printers to create 145 limited edition fine art prints, including etchings, drypoints and lithographs. A highly regarded survey exhibition of Kevin's work was held in 2015 at the Art Gallery of Ballarat before touring to the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Launceston. 

The 2018 APW George Collie Memorial Print Award was awarded to Graham Fransella and Euan Heng.

• Graham Fransella's distinctive simplified figures make him one of Australian's most widely recognized printmakers. His work is represented in public and private collections around Australian and internationally. He arrived in Australia from England in 1975 and combined teaching positions in tertiary institutions with his art practice for more than 20 years. He has collaborated on over 45 editions with APW printers since 1985, producing work which has toured nationally and internationally. He is the recipient of a number of significant prizes and awards.
   
• Euan Heng arrived in Australian from Scotland in 1977. He is a highly regarded printmaker, painter and educator who has exhibited extensively in Australia and abroad. His work is represented in major public and university museum collections in all states of Australia and in Scotland. Heng has held many prestigious and senior appointments during his academic career and recently retired as Associate Professor in Graduate Research at Monash University. Heng's work with APW Printers has produced 11 editions since 2002. 

The 2017 APW George Collie Memorial Print Award was awarded to Kitty Kantilla and John Wolseley. 

• ​Kitty Kantilla (1928 – 2003) is regarded as one of the significant painters and printmakers of her generation. Kitty was introduced to printmaking later in life through workshops conducted by APW at Jilamara Arts & Craft Association in the Tiwi Islands. She made her first etching in 1995 and continued to work with APW Printers, making etchings and lithographs, until 2003. Work produced her in collaboration with APW Printers can be found the collections of major Galleries and Institutions throughout Australia and overseas.
   
• John Wolseley is one of Australia's most respected contemporary artists. Trained as a printmaker, he has continued to make fine art limited edition prints throughout his long career. Wolseley has created over 40 editions in collaboration with APW printers since 1990. These works have been acquired and exhibited in major exhibitions nationally and internationally.

The 2016 APW George Collie Memorial Print Award was awarded to Bea Maddock and Jennifer Marshall. 

• Bea Maddock (1934 - 2016) It is a measure of her status as a leading Australian printmaker that she has been the subject of two major survey exhibitions at the National Gallery of Victoria, in 1980 and 2013. In the 1970s and early 1980s she spent a significant period teaching at the Victorian College of the Arts and making prints at the Australian Print Workshop (at that time known as the Victorian Print Workshop). She was known for using print processes in novel ways and even mined local ochre as pigment for her work. 
   
• Jennifer Marshall is represented in major State and Regional collections and her work has been widely exhibited throughout Australia and internationally. She taught at RMIT, Monash, Ballarat and La Trobe Universities while continuing to pursue her own practice. During this time she made a number of prints at Australian Print Workshop. Now based in Tasmania, Marshall recently undertook an APW Artist-in-Residency. She has been commissioned to work with APW Printers on a suite of three etchings as part of this APW George Collie Memorial Award. 

The 2015 APW George Collie Memorial Print Award was awarded to Grahame King and Jan Senbergs.

• Grahame King was born in Melbourne 1915 and died in 2008. He was influential in the revival of fine art printmaking in Australia in the 1960s and served as a founding artist committee member on the Victorian Print Workshop (later named Australian Print Workshop). APW invited him to produce a suite of three ambitious multi-colour lithographs with APW Printers in 1999. 
   
• Jan Senbergs was born in Latvia in 1939 and moved to Melbourne in 1950. His creative relationship with Australian Print Workshop began with his first collaborative print produced at the workshop in 1991. Since then, he has produced over 70 limited edition fine art prints in collaboration with APW printers including his major etching Port Liardet Limner. Many of these works have been exhibited and acquired by major art museums around Australia and overseas including The British Museum.

The inaugural 2014 APW George Collie Memorial Print Award was awarded to Rick Amor and Noel Counihan.

• Rick Amor was born in Frankston, Victoria in 1948 and lives in Melbourne. Rick’s creative relationship with Australian Print Workshop spans almost three decades. Over this time, he has produced over 80 fine art limited prints in collaboration with APW Printers that have been exhibited and acquired by major Australian Art Galleries and Museums.
   
• Noel Counihan was born in Melbourne 1913 and died in 1986. He was a highly influential member of the Victorian Printmakers Group in the late 1970s which successfully reformed to establish the Victorian Print Workshop in 1981 (later renamed Australian Print Workshop). Counihan was a key founding artist member of Print Workshop’s Advisory Committee from 1981 until his death in 1986.

A selection of limited edition fine art prints by artists who have been awarded the APW George Collie Memorial Print Award are available for purchase from the APW Gallery and online through the APW Printstore.