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Case Study: Mr Joe Hurst Ceramic Wall

The local Council of Marrickville, an inner western suburb of Sydney, created a new park called ‘Sydenham Green’, after demolishing 120 houses which were directly affected by excessive aircraft noise resulting from the construction of Sydney Airport’s third runway. Within the new parklands were placed several artworks – the centre piece depicting an oversize lounge room.

Artist Ron Smith was commissioned to design part of the lounge room and he wanted to make a statement which made the walls appear to be papered in newsprint. After making up a scale paste-up of newspaper clippings from major and local newspapers protesting the excessive noise pollution from aircraft, the Council commissioned artist and print maker, Joe Hurst, and ceramic artist Janine Schenkel, to reproduce Ron Smith’s design.

The project required 138 bone coloured vitrified ceramic tiles, 300mm x 300mm, to display reprints of the above-mentioned newspaper articles. Joe Hurst already had a RISO SP-275 Screen Fax which, when combined with the RISO ScreenMaster pretensioned screens, provided an ideal combination to economically produce the 138 individual tile prints and RISO ScreenMaster 70 Mesh x 45cm width x 20 metres length was chosen.

Joe Hurst’s ingenuity set up a wooden printing block, which held the tiles ‘line at a time’ and assisted registration - pictured right. A scale mock-up was scanned into the computer, then scaled to correct size and printed onto A4 paper. These were then taped together and photocopied on A3 paper to provide an exact scale positive. Joe then imaged each of 138 screens on his RISO SP-275 ScreenFax – each exposure is instantaneous. After mounting the imaged screens, screen printing with a gloss black enamel proceeded - process pictured below.

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Janine Schenkel then fired the screen printed tiles at 980° Celsius and assisted the tiler to erect them and ensure each one was in correct registration. Tiles were spaced at 2mm-3mm and grouted with an off-white grout.

This finished ceramic ‘wall’ with gloss black print on a bone background is further enhanced by the white grout and is a telling statement protesting the serious noise pollution problem.

Click each side of the wall in the picture below for more detail	It also provides an outstanding example of the efficiency, time saving, economy and eventual professional print result of the RISO Screen Printing System. Had this project been produced by traditional screen printing method, the cost would have been prohibitive, as Joe succinctly states – ‘it would have taken three times longer’.