Going Gocco

Today, Fayroze Lutta took a small number of students through her gocco paces. This fun and relaxed workshop used one gocco machine to pump out multiple postcards, bags, fabric and images. What is a gocco machine I hear you ask? This nifty little device was designed in Japan in the 1970'a and by the mid 1980's it was in almost 70% of all Japanese households. It uses light to transpose images on to a photographic screen, which you can print in a variety of ways using coloured inks.

Here is Fayroze with her trusty gocco machine. As you can see, it's small, compact and with the right instruction was easy to use. The possibilities are endless and although we managed to print bags, fabric, postcards and paper in the 4 hours workshop, I am already thinking of the zines and posters that could be great using this technology. Here is a drawing I made and then photocopied to an A5 size. It was then gocced and transferred onto a transparent screen. The screen on the right hand side was then inked up with purple ink and using a squeegy, transferred onto paper.

Others in the class used a mixture of text, photographs, hand drawn images and etchings to create their designs. It was so easy to run off a huge number of postcards and I even made my christmas cards....how organised am I? Fayroze brought in an old type writer and stamped letters so we could experiment and layer our images.

This was an etched image made by one of the other students, which was photocopied, transferred on to the gocco plate and then printed on fabric multiple times. Dreaming of a barb-b-que shirt range!

If you wish you had made our workshop today, then do not fret as Fayroze will be holding another one on the 17th September at Centrehouse Community Art Centre. It starts at 11am and goes to 3pm, so if you are interested give us a call on 09 9428 4898 or go to the website http://www.centrehouse.org.au/.