Ten Years, Three Visits: Touring Make-Ready, London

Printshop Tours

Aug 30

We have been visiting Tom Murphy for the better part of a decade, and each time the studio is bigger than the last. There is a particular pleasure in following a printer across the arc of a career, of having been in the room early, and getting to watch where they’re ambitions take them.

Our first visit, in 2016, Make-Ready was South East London Print Studio: Tom between premises, running contract editions for early-career and established artists with more skill than square footage, and an organisation to the operation that told you exactly where it was headed.

By our second visit in 2019, the garage had become a proper Kentish Town printshop and the client list had grown to match with editions for Hauser & Wirth, and the Calder estate. Tom’s really has an unmatched eye for detail and fastidious ethic so it’s not really surprising that he was already catching the eye of the most discerning galleries and clients.

Since our previous visit, Make-Ready has been acquired by Avant Arte and now operates as their exclusive printing partner. The studio has grown into the role; where there was once Tom and a press or two, there is now a large-format production space with a team of around thirteen working the floor. There are numerous automated presses laying down ink and conveyor belts sending wet prints through driers. I couldn’t quite believe the volume that can go through the studio in a single day and that there are always yet more editions waiting to get on press.

What is also striking is how little the ambition has changed even as everything around it has scaled. This is still, recognisably, Tom's studio; the same exacting standard, the same infectious relationship to the process, now expressed across a much larger operation and a roster that reads like a survey of contemporary art: Katz, Kapoor, Bradford, Ruscha, Perry, and on. We hope it’s anot another seven years before our next visit, thank you for having us Make-Ready!

Learn more:
make-ready.co
avantarte.com