Biography
Michael Reed was born in 1950 in Ōtautahi/Christchurch on the South Island of Aotearoa/New Zealand and is one of the senior figures in New Zealand's printmaking scene as well as a regular participant in the international mokuhanga community. He took a Diploma in Fine Arts in Printmaking at the Ilam School of Fine Arts, University of Canterbury, in 1969, completed a Diploma of Teaching at Christchurch Teachers' Training College in 1971, and returned to Ilam much later for an MFA in Printmaking awarded in 1999. From 1975 to 2016 he taught printmaking and art and design at the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology (now the Ara Institute of Canterbury), and that teaching post anchored a forty-year practice as an exhibiting artist. His earliest recognition came at the start of his career, as co-winner of the ANZ Bank Award for Contemporary New Zealand Printmaking in 1970; later awards include a Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council Major Creative Development Grant in 1991, the Hand to Cloth Award (Melbourne, 1998), the Jean Herbison Award in 1998–99, and an Excellence in Innovation Award from the Institute of Technology and Polytechnics of New Zealand in 2003. Reed's engagement with Japanese woodblock printmaking dates principally from his time at the Nagasawa Art Park Artist-in-Residence programme on Awaji Shima in 2002, the residency founded by Keizō Iwami that did much to introduce contemporary non-Japanese practitioners to traditional mokuhanga technique. He has since been a recurring presence at the triennial International Mokuhanga Conference, including the 2014 conference in Tokyo and the 2021 SUMI-FUSION conference in Nara, where he co-coordinated the NOIR/KURO 黒 international exchange portfolio in response to the conference's sumi theme alongside a group of international printmakers including Katie Baldwin and Daniel Heyer. Reed's work is consistently politically engaged. He treats printmaking as a medium with a long tradition of social and political address, and his prints from the 1990s onward have used a deliberately restricted palette of black, white, and red — colors he reads as truth, blood, and the historical pigments of letterpress — together with text, listed conflict-by-conflict catalogues, and motifs borrowed from Mexican folk imagery and indigenous design. The 2008 Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū exhibition Business as Usual, which the gallery framed around his critique of United Nations interventions in late-twentieth-century civil conflicts, remains his best-known institutional show; the catalogue text records his position that the formal aims of the UN are 'regrettably under-pinned by duplicity and self interest.' He has also worked extensively in printed textiles and in cast and struck art medals, the latter through long-standing membership in Medallion Artists New Zealand from 1991 onward, and his medal work has been exhibited internationally at the Fédération Internationale de la Médaille d'Art (FIDEM) congresses. His exhibition record includes Philagrafika 2010 (Philadelphia), the Waikato Museum in Hamilton, the Palacio de Comunicaciones in Valencia, and exhibitions in Havana and Mexico City. Public collections holding his work include the National Gallery of Australia, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, Auckland War Memorial Museum, the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, the Library of Congress in Washington, Het Koninklijk Penningkabinet at the Rijksmuseum (Netherlands), the British Museum Coin and Medal Department, and the Special Collections of the University of Colorado. Reed's place in the mokuhanga revival is that of a senior teacher-practitioner who has used the introduction of Japanese water-based woodblock technique within a longer career of politically motivated print practice, rather than as a stylistic destination in itself.
Key Facts
- Active Period
- 1950
- Nationality
- 🇺🇸United States
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
- Works Indexed
- 41
Frequently Asked Questions
Michael Reed was born in 1950 in Ōtautahi/Christchurch on the South Island of Aotearoa/New Zealand and is one of the senior figures in New Zealand's printmaking scene as well as a regular participant in the international mokuhanga community. He took a Diploma in Fine Arts in Printmaking at the Ilam School of Fine Arts, University of Canterbury, in 1969, completed a Diploma of Teaching at Christchurch Teachers' Training College in 1971, and returned to Ilam much later for an MFA in Printmaking awarded in 1999. From 1975 to 2016 he taught printmaking and art and design at the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology (now the Ara Institute of Canterbury), and that teaching post anchored a forty-year practice as an exhibiting artist. His earliest recognition came at the start of his career, as co-winner of the ANZ Bank Award for Contemporary New Zealand Printmaking in 1970; later awards include a Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council Major Creative Development Grant in 1991, the Hand to Cloth Award (Melbourne, 1998), the Jean Herbison Award in 1998–99, and an Excellence in Innovation Award from the Institute of Technology and Polytechnics of New Zealand in 2003. Reed's engagement with Japanese woodblock printmaking dates principally from his time at the Nagasawa Art Park Artist-in-Residence programme on Awaji Shima in 2002, the residency founded by Keizō Iwami that did much to introduce contemporary non-Japanese practitioners to traditional mokuhanga technique. He has since been a recurring presence at the triennial International Mokuhanga Conference, including the 2014 conference in Tokyo and the 2021 SUMI-FUSION conference in Nara, where he co-coordinated the NOIR/KURO 黒 international exchange portfolio in response to the conference's sumi theme alongside a group of international printmakers including Katie Baldwin and Daniel Heyer. Reed's work is consistently politically engaged. He treats printmaking as a medium with a long tradition of social and political address, and his prints from the 1990s onward have used a deliberately restricted palette of black, white, and red — colors he reads as truth, blood, and the historical pigments of letterpress — together with text, listed conflict-by-conflict catalogues, and motifs borrowed from Mexican folk imagery and indigenous design. The 2008 Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū exhibition Business as Usual, which the gallery framed around his critique of United Nations interventions in late-twentieth-century civil conflicts, remains his best-known institutional show; the catalogue text records his position that the formal aims of the UN are 'regrettably under-pinned by duplicity and self interest.' He has also worked extensively in printed textiles and in cast and struck art medals, the latter through long-standing membership in Medallion Artists New Zealand from 1991 onward, and his medal work has been exhibited internationally at the Fédération Internationale de la Médaille d'Art (FIDEM) congresses. His exhibition record includes Philagrafika 2010 (Philadelphia), the Waikato Museum in Hamilton, the Palacio de Comunicaciones in Valencia, and exhibitions in Havana and Mexico City. Public collections holding his work include the National Gallery of Australia, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, Auckland War Memorial Museum, the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, the Library of Congress in Washington, Het Koninklijk Penningkabinet at the Rijksmuseum (Netherlands), the British Museum Coin and Medal Department, and the Special Collections of the University of Colorado. Reed's place in the mokuhanga revival is that of a senior teacher-practitioner who has used the introduction of Japanese water-based woodblock technique within a longer career of politically motivated print practice, rather than as a stylistic destination in itself.
Michael Reed was active born in 1950. They were associated with the Contemporary Mokuhanga movement.
Michael Reed's work was shaped by the Contemporary Mokuhanga tradition in Japanese woodblock printmaking. Contemporary Mokuhanga: Contemporary mokuhanga (literally "wood-block print") encompasses artists working from approximately 1970 to the present who continue or reinvent traditional Japanese woodblock printing techniques.
Michael Reed is a contemporary printmaker working in the mokuhanga (Japanese woodblock) tradition. Their work contributes to the living tradition of Japanese woodblock printing. Prices for contemporary mokuhanga prints range from $100 for smaller works to $1,500 for major compositions. Most prints sell in the $180–$600 range. The global mokuhanga community has been growing, with increasing exhibition opportunities and collector interest. Contemporary mokuhanga represents an affordable entry point for collectors.
