Re: Proclaim Print – Viola Chiang

Collecting Types for 1916 Proclamation as a Living Archive, Viola Chiang, toning a cyanotype 

Artist’s Statement 

My practice explores between time, space and human interactions with the environment, human histories behind seemingly insignificant objects. The objects (images) appear as unadorned formal arrangements in a print restaging of the interrelationship of material, image, object and time. 

The work comes from the language and the rhythm, of the voice, of the action, of time taken to fill a print with marks and moving into a space (book), a print as a poetic space where I can tell stories. 

Outline of Process 

Responding to the 1916 Proclamation in 2026, I focused on Irish type design. I found many different posters, postcards and advertising with particular Irish type design before the rising , during the rising, and after the rising, and I collected them to make an archive to remember this important period in Ireland. As a printmaker, I am always thinking about how to communicate with printmaking, how a word on a poster can catch people’s eyes? A simple, clean design type is the best way to communicate. The print industry in Ireland was very strong and important from the 17th century, and linked to politics. Print as a form, printmaking as a language. In 1916, printers transformed the words of artists, activists, politicians and industrialists into works of permanent ink, which survive today.  

For the project responding to the 1916 Proclamation in 2026, I collected different posters, postcards of the rising with different Irish types, printed carefully with cyanotype, and did cyanotype toning, a traditional technique in the 19th century to reuse in our time, each print as a living archive, also as documents to spread words to communicate. 

Three pieces, each piece 15*25cm) 25*45cm

Pre-order sale, works available for early December 

This work forms part of the exhibition Re: Proclaim – Seven Artists Respond to the 1916 Proclamation – National Print Museum 

Limited edition of 30 

Photography by Mark Henderson 

Supported by the Commemorations Unit of the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport