THE Temple Bar International Print Show is actually several exhibitions, scattered about the area in various venues, but in fairly close proximity. East Europe is well to the fore, and in the Original Print Gallery a number of Polish artists put their work on view. This is a quality exhibition, well balanced and technically expert, but with an extra dimension of panache. Adam Maleic's figurative, quasi expressionist etchings have an individual colour sense, at once dreamy and acidulous, and the linocuts of Jerzy Grabowski show a clean, elegant, abstract sense. Zbigniew Biel is also highly individual, almost mannered, and Ludmila Arnmata and Andzej Bednarczyk are others who stand out.
Prints from the Czech Republic are mounted in the National Photographic Archive and in the Temple Bar Music Centre, close by. They vary widely in style and content with a tendency towards a kind of literary, illustrative surrealism, but it is hard to generalise. Kralova. Budikova, Axmann, Novak are names I noted down; though, confusingly, some of these do not appear in the rather rudimentary check list which I fastened on.
The Hungarians hang in the Archive, too (a pleasant space, by the way). Of these, I thought Imre Keri outstanding; the bold, abstract expressionist style of Peter Kovacs is also commanding. Of the Finns (same venue), Ulla Virto's faintly Art Nouveau woodblocks seem rather too decorative purely as prints, but hung as banners they have real presence. Eeva lisa Isomaa uses a highly personal type of "photo-etching", with an effect which is nostalgic and also faintly sinister.
The Art house mounts an exhibition called Transformations, made up of works from the Camberwell College of Art in London. This is both high powered and high spirited, full of invention and experiment of the right kind, not the half baked doodling which often passes as such. Some of the works are in three dimensions, and a large proportion of them stretch the definition "sprint" to the limit and beyond, but as an exhibition it is personal and - dare I say it - entertaining. Raz Barfield, Naren Barfield, Jeffrey Edwards are among the best, but there is no dross. Computers, of course, have been used and the expertise is impressive.