Graphic Art Group focuses on the labour, patterns, pressure, and rhythm of letterpress printing—a pre-digital, tactile measurement of time.

In an era of digital efficiency, where complex layouts are completed in seconds, traditional letterpress workshops like Kwong Wah Printing Company embody a profound density of time and human commitment. Participation in the workshop at Kwong Wah Printing Company revealed the craft’s inherent limitations. Printing a simple table required one to two full days of meticulous hand labour, carefully aligning every horizontal and vertical line by hand, while the same task takes mere seconds in the digital realm. This contrast prompts reflection on how technology, which promises greater efficiency and easier lives, has paradoxically left people busier and more overwhelmed. These constraints offer fresh insight into the human dimensions of time, labour, and the humanity of machines.

The exhibition consists of four works inspired by the operational procedures and intrinsic constraints of letterpress printing. These works explore the relationship between time and the humanity of machines. Sams Cheung’s Between Type transforms the tedious hunt for individual letterpress sorts into a playful, tactile game of discovery, inviting viewers to linger in the quiet joy of material encounter. Yiu Cheng and Issac Li’s Six Thirty utilises a malfunctioning clock as the driving mechanism for the printing process, reflecting on the contemporary possibilities of letterpress printing. Ceci Lavina’s The Human Crank translates the visual syntax of letterpress into a visceral, bodily experience, threading the intimate personal histories of Kwong Wah Printing Company’s owner through the rhythm of the press. Finally, Frank Chan and Rogerger Ng’s Entropic Process subjects copper plates to calibrated pressure, revealing the fragility and resilience of both material and maker in a poignant meditation on impermanence and endurance.

Through these works, the exhibition encourages viewers to move beyond regarding letterpress as a mere relic of the past and to embrace it instead as a living, deeply humanistic practice that bridges history and the present, labour and creativity, materiality and emotion. It further explores how movable-type printing can transcend its original functional role to become a vital artistic medium that extends across disciplines and media.

1/ 

Yiu Cheng and Issac Li

Six Thirty, 2026

Clock, movable type block, sensor, kinetic device, stainless steel component, wood

2/


Frank Chan and Rogerger Ng

Entropic Process, 2026

Mixed media installation (Copper plate, stainless steel components, wood, electromagnetic impact device)

3/


Sams Cheung

Between Type, 2026  


Mixed media installation (Webcam, motion capture system, real-time generative visuals)

4/


Ceci Lavina 

The Human Crank, 2026 

Mixed media installation (Galvanized steel pipes structure, resin printed handle, interactive audio program, rotation sensor, speakers)