Giancarlo Savaris, AUKUS-POKUS – Pear-shaped!, 2026, screenprint, 500 x 360 mm, 1 of 6. Photo: ANCA.
While we have all heard of the Five Eyes Anglosphere Intelligence Alliance, FiveInk is a Canberra-based alliance of printmakers who have set themselves the task of saving the world from apocalyptic threats.
FiveInk is a group of five printmakers – Nicole Henry, Pamela Manning, Giancarlo Savaris, Ann Widdup and Claire Young – who came together about 10 years ago and meet up every Wednesday to get on with their printmaking at Megalo. This exhibition, evocatively titled Feels like end times – But we’re still printing, is their fourth group exhibition.
There is a sense of despair that many people feel when facing a world that appears to be spinning out of control through the cumulative stupidity of world leaders, the growing nuclear threat and the impact of climate change.
Each of the five artists, in a personal and distinctive manner, responds to this sense of crisis, sometimes employing irony or arcane philosophies, or through a simple celebration of the human spirit and the beauty found in nature.
Giancarlo Savaris, AUKUS-POKUS – Pegged number 1, 2026, screenprint, 460 x 300mm, 1 of 6. Photo: ANCA.
Throughout history, printmaking has played a somewhat schizophrenic role as an art form that has created exquisite artworks of exceptional quality, as well as works designed for the mass dissemination of information through a visual medium.
For example, Pablo Picasso’s Dove of Peace (1949) lithograph became one of the most widely circulated prints produced in huge numbers as a screenprint. Many of the prints in this exhibition follow in the tradition of Picasso’s peace-loving dove.
Giancarlo Savaris, in his AUKUS-POKUS series, employs humour to ridicule the justification of AUKUS as a strategy for Australia’s future.
The artist notes, “Vivid colours and imagery create works that are playful at first glance while hinting at deeper concerns about sovereignty, dependence and the surrender of long-term national interests.
“Beneath the humour lies a sense of uncertainty about a future increasingly shaped by distant and mercenary powers and erratic global forces.”
Savaris’s stark screenprints, including Pegged number 1 and Pear-shaped, with ubiquitous nuclear symbol and the insects that may be the sole survivors of the nuclear winter, are haunting and effective.
Pamela Manning, Raven Frees the Light (copper) blue background 2, 2025, screenprint, 300 x 300 mm. Photo: ANCA.
Pamela Manning’s ravens tap into a mythology of these birds as travellers between realms of being and as harbingers of future tidings. There is a stark simplicity in her images that lends them a striking power.
Nicole Henry, 3hPA fall, 2026, screen-printed monoprint, 700 x 500 mm. Photo: ANCA.
Nicole Henry’s mystical images explore the implications of our present lifestyle as a warning concerning our future. They are slow, meditative images that invite prolonged contemplation, with the viewer invited to draw their own conclusions.
Ann Widdup, The only Dive pool in Canberra- Build It, Fix It, But don’t Lose it!, 2026, screenprint, 700 x 500 mm, 1 of 10. Photo: ANCA.
In contrast, Ann Widdup employs the raw and immediate impact of the screenprint and the language of poster art. Her The only Dive pool in Canberra – Build It, Fix It, But don’t Lose it!, through a clever combination of image and text, produces an unambiguous message about a local Canberra issue, but one that can be seen as having much broader implications.
Claire Young, Balleny Islands and Treaty symbol, 2026, drypoint and collograph with embossing, 700 x 500 mm, 1 of 1. Photo: ANCA
Claire Young has created some of the most lyrical images in the exhibition, which follow her journey to Antarctica and her work on the legal framework governing the fragile continent amid acute global warming. Her delicate balance of drypoint and collagraph, with blind embossing, seems to celebrate a beauty that can be seen and intuitively felt. There is a quiet reserve and majesty in her prints and her artist’s book.
The world may be out of joint, and for most of us, things seem overwhelming and beyond the reach of a single individual; however, the FiveInk printmakers are taking a stand and calling out the catastrophe unfolding before our eyes.
FiveInk, Feels like end times – But we’re still printing, is now displaying at ANCA Gallery, 1 Rosevear Place, Dickson. It’s open Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 11 am to 5 pm, until 28 June.
