Gabriella Marcella felt something in her brain click when she first used a risograph printer. \u201cThe process, the immediacy \u2013 it resonated,\u201d says the Scottish-Italian designer. \u201cA lot of my aesthetic comes from that machine.\u201d Many artists and creatives share that reaction, and now Marcella has curated an exhibition of international art showcasing their work at Glasgow\u2019s Glue Factory Galleries.<\/p>\n
The risograph, created in Japan in the 1980s, is a nifty printer that looks like a photocopier but creates work like a screenprinter. The company that produced it, Riso Kagaku<\/a>, was founded by Noboru Hayama, a businessman whose goal was to make intuitive and affordable printing products. Using soy inks to produce small print-runs of products with a handmade feel and distinctive style, the risograph print \u2013 or riso \u2013 has become synonymous with zines, activism and independent creatives.<\/p>\n \u2018A postcard through the door has a weight, texture and intimacy that digital communication doesn\u2019t\u2019 \u2026 designer Gabriella Marcella. Photograph: Alix Mcintosh\/Alix McIntosh Photography<\/p>\n \u201cI bought my first riso off eBay for about \u00a3200,\u201d says Marcella. \u201cAs soon as the auction was won, my dad drove me round to the house to collect it from a pair of pensioners who used it to print their grandsons\u2019 football gazettes.\u201d<\/p>\n Marcella first fell in love with the printer when she studied for a year at New York\u2019s Pratt Institute, before returning to Glasgow to set up her own design practice called Studio Risotto<\/a> in 2012. The vivid colours and bold shapes associated with risographs became signatures of her work for clients including St\u00fcssy, Apple and Swatch as well as her own prints and products.<\/p>\n In 2017, Marcella founded Riso Club, a non-profit programme to promote artists around the world and specifically those dedicated to risographs. \u201cI\u2019d always wanted to promote places away from the big cities like London and New York, where illustrators and creatives still work. There\u2019s a niche but global riso community who I\u2019ve got to know over the years. I wanted to profile that.\u201d<\/p>\n For a yearly membership fee, club members received an issue of four postcards from four riso artists each month. Each issue showcases work from a different international city, so Riso Club members have received art from Lille, Lima and everywhere in between. Sending the art as postcards was also important for Marcella: \u201cPhysical things land differently. A postcard through the door has a weight, texture and intimacy that digital communication doesn\u2019t \u2013 especially in the social media age \u2013 where we can scroll past hundreds of amazing images a minute.\u201d<\/p>\n Tank traps and flowers \u2026 Riso Club\u2019s issue 82 featuring Kyiv artists. Photograph: Courtesy of Risotto Studio<\/p>\n A postcard is also a simple way for people to learn about different cultures. \u201cThis is a way of discovering places through artists rather than through tourist cliches,\u201d Marcella says. \u201cPlus, due to their location, some cities have more political or diasporic weight for artists and club members, such as Kyiv and Damascus.\u201d<\/p>\n Marcella thinks this is also true to the origins of this particular print practice. \u201cThe riso has roots as a political printer \u2013 old machines often come from political parties or schools \u2013 as it was a fast and affordable way to share ideas and information.\u201d<\/p>\n Designer Mari Kinovych curated the Kyiv issue of Riso Club which was a fundraiser for the charity Razom for Ukraine<\/a>. She says she wanted to portray Kyiv as a vibrant city while acknowledging the reality of life during a war. \u201cI chose a piece by Anna Gavryliuk,\u201d she says, \u201cfeaturing tank traps and flowers to illustrate this duality. For my own contribution, I chose an illustration that reflects the tender feelings of love, acceptance and care that defined the city during the second year of the war. I have never felt a stronger sense of community and wanted to convey that.\u201d<\/p>\n Nostalgia \u2026 the Damascus issue 88 from Riso Club. Photograph: Courtesy of Risotto Studio<\/p>\n Kinda Ghannoum, who curated the issue dedicated to Damascus, also wanted to show Syria in a different way from its typical media representation. \u201cEach artist contributed a personal reflection on the city,\u201d she says, \u201cand the nostalgia many of us carry while living away from home. The results were even more beautiful than I imagined. I felt proud that together we could represent the spirit of Damascus in such a meaningful way.\u201d<\/p>\n To celebrate 100 issues of Club Riso, Marcella put together her own issue featuring her design heroes: Memphis Group<\/a> founder Nathalie Du Pasquier, artist Peter Shire and architect and designer Barbara Stauffacher Solomon. Now all 400 postcards are going on display in Glasgow, to bring the joy of risos to a wider audience. \u201cI hope they see that design can be generous, accessible and social,\u201d says Marcella, \u201cand that print can still connect people in a very direct, everyday way.\u201d<\/p>\n Riso Club 100 exhibition is at the Glue Factory Galleries<\/a>, Glasgow, 11-19 April; more information at risottostudio.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gabriella Marcella felt something in her brain click when she first used a risograph printer. \u201cThe process, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379547,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[437,434,435,436,438,146,85,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-379546","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-il","15":"tag-israel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379546\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}