Roger Butler AM is an authority on the history of Australian prints, posters and illustrated books. His career spans more than forty years and from 1981 to 2020 he headed the Department of Australian Prints at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.
Roger specialises in the history of Australian prints and printmaking ranging from pre-European settlement to the present. He also has a special interest in prints by Australian Indigenous artists and those from Papua New Guinea and the Pacific region.
He has written and curated exhibitions that have addressed diverse subjects from colonial art to the present. He has focused on numerous artist printmakers, including colonial artists John Lewin and Augustus Earle, modernist printmakers Margaret Preston, Thea Proctor and Jessie Traill, and from recent times, political posters groups such as Earthworks Poster Collective and Redback Graphics and artists such as Bea Maddock and Mike Parr.
Roger is committed to providing access to collections and sharing information on prints and printmaking within the context of Australian art in general. In 1999 he established the website prints and printmaking, an access initiative of the Gordon Darling Australia Pacific Print Fund.
His most recent publication is Printed: images by Australian artists 1942–2020. The third volume of his acclaimed series on the history of Australian prints and printmaking.
News
The National Gallery of Australia has released the third and final volume in curator Roger Butler’s acclaimed series on the history of Australian prints and printmaking, Printed: Images by Australian Artists 1942-2020.
More information about the publication is available here.
