Natalie Azzopardi

I am Natalie Azzopardi a Canberra based artist who works with photography and book arts.
I am a photography major who has always appreciated the tactile side of photography and enjoys the process of crafting an image in the darkroom and working with film. This inclination to tactility and love of process feeds into my letterpress, a medium heavy with process and tradition.

I was introduced to letterpress during study and have loved it ever since. After learning the basics, one of my first experiments in letterpress was a free thought poem where I focused on the text block, colour and overlay. From here I continued experimenting and expanding my skills by trying different papers, and type then expanding into printing on stickers and overlaying text onto images.

The whole process fascinated me, from setting the type, to locking it up in the chase, to print and surprisingly enough press cleaning; where I enjoyed an exciting by-product of cleaning ink off the rollers.

Letterpress was a tandem love, which ran second to my photography until in my honours year, when I wanted to incorporate letterpress into my main practise. Stemming from my love of vernacular photography, I created an archive of Paper Moon images by hosting photographic events. I made a series of advertising posters and post out envelopes to send people a copy of their image, using letterpress.

During this time I was also undertaking the Ampersand Duck Broadside Residency, which I won through the ANU EASS (the emerging artist support scheme). During this residency I explored a less traditional approach to letterpress and focused on letterpress’s basic qualities; of shape, colour, pattern and overlay. My Gameover series ended up being four Broadsides, which explored the defunct nature and progression of video games.

From starting on a Graphix cylinder proofing press (which reportedly previously belong to the Canberra times) at UNI to then moving onto a Vandercook SP-20 during my residency, to not having much opportunity to use a press at all, I have been left wanting.
So I am going to establish my own letterpress studio, to continue the merger of photography and letterpress and the growth of my practise. I hope to realise this growth through artist books and zines, and in particular through The Long Story, a zine on a grander scale; it will focus on the art of letterpress and photography in a multi issue zine with different themed volumes. Each volume will explore a theme through letterpress, photography and (as you might have gleamed from the name) storytelling.

The funds raised here will go towards acquiring a small Adana table top press and some new metal type from a foundry based in San Francisco, M & H Type

The general challenge is being able to incorporate letterpress into my practise independently, i.e. without the use of UNI/residency facilities. Perhaps a trickier task then with other mediums; as letterpress tools (a press, type, chases, quoins, leads, furniture….the list goes on) can be both expensive and obscure. However having gained knowledge and experience from my studies and broadside residency I am confident I can expand/establish my practise into letterpress.