Gabriella Marcella on Riso Club 100: 'It’s been a beautiful way to stay rooted locally'
This vibrant celebration of risograph printing brings together 400 artists to showcase a global, community-driven practice
Risography is a type of digital screenprinting invented in post-war Japan. The name refers to the machine, similar in appearance to a photocopier, which presses ink from a stencil-wrapped drum onto paper. The process is faster than ordinary screenprinting and more tactile than pure digital. As the ink drum and stencil are replaced with each colour, the paper is pressed in ink bleeds and erasures, producing a unique print marked by the artist’s hand.
Gabriella Marcella founded Risotto studio in 2012, offering a riso printing service and space for designers to collaborate and develop. In 2017, the studio birthed Riso Club, a service run for ‘love rather than profit’ which distributes postcard prints between a community of artists and subscribers. Marcella describes how, over time, the project grew into a global network, with each issue curated from a different city: ‘for a small studio in Glasgow, it’s been a beautiful way to stay rooted locally while still being part of a much wider creative conversation.’
Riso Club 100 retraces that conversation across 100 issues and 400 artists in an exhibition which coincides with the opening of Marcella’s new studio, Risotto HQ. Built in alignment with her own practice, centring ‘colour, modular systems and the everyday realities of making things by hand’, Risotto HQ fits neatly in Glasgow’s DIY art scene which, like the Riso Club itself, pushes beyond its size in international reach. In the exhibition, Marcella’s curation is guided by the ‘democratic’ imperfections of risograph printing which allow all kinds of cultures, folklore and visual languages to sit comfortably side by side and corner to corner, across every inch of the gallery’s walls. A series of artist-led workshops enhance the exhibition, epitomising and sustaining the evergreen growth of Risotto’s community, hopefully for at least another 100 issues.
Glue Factory, Glasgow, Saturday 11–Sunday 19 April.