Mike Allison • exhibition

In 2015, Mike started a series of prints based in and around Birmingham that he called 100 Views of Birmingham. One of the initial inspirations for the series came from Atagawa Hiroshige’s series 100 Views of Edo completed in the 1850s. The fresh and unusual compositions employed by Hiroshige have particularly influenced Mike as he journeys through the city of Birmingham looking for potential views. Mike works in relief printmaking methods such as engraving and linocut. He combines these processes with monotype to create complex multi layered prints. Perhaps a defining moment in the series is Mike’s adoption of the ‘kento’ registration system. A technique used by the print houses of Japan at the time of Hiroshige. This system, or rather an adaptation called the floating kento, has enabled Mike to consistently register many layers of lino with a good degree of accuracy.

Mike’s prints are a celebration of a city, observing how the light and the seasons are reflected in Birmingham’s diverse buildings and spaces.

The exhibition captures the series at a point when Mike has just created a print of the Hare and Hounds, Kings Heath – the series is close to completion and showing much of the journey, but with another 20 or so still to come there are still some surprises to come.

Mike is a full-time printmaker with a workshop at the Ruskin Glasshouse in Stourbridge. He studied at Winchester School of Art, graduating in 1992 and completed an MA at De Montfort University in Leicester in 2005.