Congratulations to Sydney Printmakers members Seong Cho, Nathalie Hartog Gautier and Anne Starling, who are finalists in this years Fremantle Print Awards.
This is the final post from the Burnie Print Prize.
Some Sydney Printmakers members are finalists in this exhibition.
Inkmasters Print Exhibition will show at Tanks Arts Centre Cairns. It is an international juried exhibition which brings together the best printmakers from our region with national and international artists from around the world. The works entered can be any print medium (or combination of media), traditional and contemporary, in a range of formats including 3D works such as artists’ books. 100 prints will be selected from all entries. Prizes will be awarded including an award named for Anna Eglitis, a senior Cairns artist who mentored some of the Far North’s most prolific and important artists.
On opening night there will be a public lecture at 5pm and the official launch commences at 6pm. All are cordially invited.
Rust, Blood, Gold and Cyanide
Woodcut, rust prints on kozo.
In 2019 I completed a short residency at Karangahake on the North Island of New Zealand. The ruins of the goldmine, especially the Victoria Battery (which processed the ore to enable extraction of gold) were like a grim monument to the labour of the many men and women who lived, worked and died there: the huge steel hoppers which once held the ore were now merely rusted remnants, and the grey concrete arches which once supported the cones now empty colonnades, and sudden shafts of bright light pierce the shattered roof of the building. The river below the Battery no longer runs blue with cyanide.
The local graveyards tell the stories of men killed in mine accidents.
“Silent Falls, Carrington”
Stone Lithograph and Chine Collé on Kitakata Handmade Japanese Paper
2020. 52 x 43 cm
“Silent Falls, Carrington” derives from local waterfalls in and around Budderoo National Park NSW, an area I’ve been revisiting to walk and draw. The falls are mesmerising and ever changing by the second while constant in their continuous flow. It’s the place I spent the last day of bushwalking together with my elderly parents in 2017. They instilled in me a love of land, quiet reflection and admiration for the details of nature. As with many of my landscapes, I feel there are opposing forces at play, balancing the complex and the simple, the sensitive and the bold, intimacy and grandeur, the inside world of personal sentiments and the outside world of nature’s rawness.
For me, with stone lithography there is a flow between the process, materials and image making. It’s very tactile, sensory and requires awareness. The materials have a history, the stone has had a life before you existed, there’s a sensitivity with marks and meditation in the pace of working. Lithography offers me a very direct way of making painterly marks within printmaking and carries with it a rich gamut of tones and textures such as reticulated washes which mirror forms also present in nature.
Here is Salvatore Gerardi’s work selected for the Burnie Print Prize.
Shadow Lines: Lake Cathie
This work is a direct reference to the environmental concerns facing the water catchment of Lake Cathie on the mid north coast of NSW. Shadow Lines is informed by the dry surfaces and imprints left at the water’s edge over time. The shadows are the transient traces of memory. In this context a dialogue between the absence and presence of water both past and present speaks of the environmental consequences facing the region.
Seong Cho Windy Hill
This work is entitled, ‘Windy Hill’ and is a woodblock print. It is an abstract expression of the movement of wind through the air and natural landscape. I produced this work during my time at the Art Print Residence in Spain in March 2020, while I was in isolation at the height of the coronavirus pandemic in Europe.
I was inspired to create this work by the strong spring winds as they moved through the grass and over the hills of Catalonia. The abstract shapes and lines in this work are also a metaphorical representation of life’s journey, where we are often swept up in events, ideas and experiences that are beyond our control, as if we are a leaf being blown along by the wind. Sometimes the metaphorical winds of life may take us to beautiful places, sometimes to dark crevasses or perhaps beyond the clouds, but the unexpected journey is what makes life worthwhile.
Anne STARLING
Nuclear Family
My art practice explores human interaction with the urban environment. The menacing impact of industry and impending development is a constant themein my images. Nuclear Family is a social narrative of vanishing suburbia. The image relies on a ‘play on words’ – the dual meaning of ‘nuclear’ allows a disquieting image to masquerade as family intimacy. The urban landscape has been compromised to accommodate progress and as a result society co exists with the ever increasing by products of progress. The family unit stands proudly in the front of their home. The image of the ‘Great Australian Dream’ exudes safety and familiarity but all is not perfect. Nuclear Family is an image of contrasts, a ‘snap shot’ of modern society living under the threat of industrial overload.
vanishing, 2019
9 layered woodblock prints in three panels
83 x195 cm framed
Mangrove ecosystems are critical to our shorelines. They form a buffer between land and water, providing protection from erosion and filtering runoff. They are primary sea life nurseries and host a myriad of creatures essential to the health of shorelines. They are highly efficient carbon sinks. Chronic pressures on these environments from land clearing, the use of herbicides and pesticides, global warming and associated drought and severe storms are endangering them with potentially catastrophic consequences for the health of land and sea and ultimately humans.
I spent time working with a citizens’ science project that monitors the mangrove forests of the Daintree in far North Queensland. I had the privilege of venturing into a terrain where humans do not routinely go and to viscerally experience an environment of gritty beauty and intricate interrelationships. This work is one of a series of works I made in response to the mystery, majesty and fragility of these forests. The damage caused to this environment is ongoing and palpable. I wanted to capture both the sense of threat and the beautiful fragility that I witnessed.
