Every two years, Japan’s Kyoto Print Exhibition Executive Committee partners with a country to present an international print exhibition. This year’s instalment, Kyoto Hanga International Print Exhibition: Japan and Australia, opens at Caloundra Regional Gallery in the Sunshine Coast this week with forty-seven Japanese and twenty-five Australian print artists, including six from the Sunshine Coast. These artists represent some of the very best that Australia and the Kyoto Regions of Western Japan have to offer, their art covering a wonderfully broad range of styles, palettes, and traditions.

Coinciding with the opening weekend of the biennial exhibition will be the Kyoto Hanga International Print Symposium: Japan and Australia 2019, hosted by the University of the Sunshine Coast and offering talks with several distinguished printmakers and professors on a wide range of fascinating topics surrounding present-day printmaking.

Day one of two will dive into the Evolution of Ukiyo-e and Woodblock Prints, and the life of legendary Japanese mokuhanga (woodblock print) innovator Akira Kurosaki, who passed away last May at the age of 82 after a career marked by innovation, experimentation and renowned mentoring. Kurosaki Sensei served as Professor and head of Printmaking at Kyoto Seika University from 1987, and his images can be found in museums across the globe.

Among countless accolades and accomplishments, Kurosaki invented the disk baren, a tool now essential in modern mokuhanga that iterated on the traditional barens of his time, and his experimental work in papermaking is said to have greatly helped to push papermaking into the world of fine art.

Speaking for this keynote will be Atsuhiko Musashi, Professor of Art at the Kyoto Seika University. Musashi will talk on Akira Kurosaki’s time, as well as step attendees through the history of Japanese woodcuts, an ancient and unmistakable practice that started in the early 17^th century as Ukiyo-e and conjured several distinct tangents over the centuries.

The following day, Dr Jan Hogan, Head of Discipline (Art) and coordinator of Printmaking at the University of Tasmania will host The poetics of flow: the enfolding of matter, memory and print, where she will reflect on strings of ideas, materials and expressions that reappear through time in Ukiyo-e, and across geological straights.

Among the artist talks at the university are A Meeting of Cultures, Materiality and Ideas in Contemporary Print Practice, and Print Processes as Generators, as well as talks with the artists on the Sunday afternoon at Caloundra Regional Gallery.

Australia’s connection with the exhibitions started in 2010 when late renowned printmaker Jörg Schmeisser approached the Print Council of Australia’s president Akky van Ogtrop on behalf of the Kyoto Print Committee. To represent Australian printmakers and foster artistic exchange between the two countries, the Japan/Australia Printmaking Exhibition opened at the Kyoto City Art Museum in 2014, later travelling to Fukuyama Art Museum in Hiroshima.

Previous Kyoto Hanga partners include China, Bulgaria, Thailand, the United States, Poland, the UK and Canada.

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Kyoto Hanga International Print Symposium: Japan and Australia 2019 is on 21-22 September. See University Sunshine Coast website for ticketing information.

Kyoto Hanga International Print Exhibition: Japan and Australia is at Caloundra Regional Gallery 19 September-10 November