Burnie Print Prize: Seong Cho

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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. 

Fifty Squared Art Prize Call for Entries

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This Art Prize has a category for Works on Paper.

Entries are now open for the Fifty Squared Art Prize 2021

Brunswick Street Gallery is excited to announce that entries are now open for the Fifty Squared Art Prize 2021. With over $6000 in prizes to be awarded, this art prize is open to all 2D artworks measuring 50x50cm or less. All levels of experience welcome, ALL entries exhibited 25 June – 9 July 2021.

Now in its fourth year, the Fifty Squared Art Prize attracts thousands of artists and art lovers to its showcase exhibition in the heart of Fitzroy, one of Melbourne’s most creative suburbs.

Over $6000 in prizes to be awarded:

First Prize: $4000 Cash Prize (non-acquisitive)

Brunswick Street Gallery Prize: $1500 Solo Exhibition

Works on Paper Prize: Selected by our sponsors.

People’s Choice Award and more.

DEADLINE FOR ENTRIES: MIDNIGHT SUNDAY 16 MAY 2021.

To apply online and full T&C’s, please visit www.brunswickstreetgallery.com.au

BurniePrintPrize:AnneStarling

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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.

Burnie Print Prize: Helen Mueller

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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.

 

Burnie Print Prize: Rafael Butron

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Impact.     Rafael Butron
Wood Print over Copperplate engraving on Hahnemuhle paper
72.5 cm x 206.5 cm

“Impact” explores personal emotive interpretations of the landscape affected by climate change. Within this work the impact of climate creates an awareness in which humanity must start noticing changes like fire storms resulting in a land ravaged by extremes. The cross in the center draws attention to the damage that occurs on the land. Many of my recent works examine these extreme weather events. The depiction of the landscape affected by changes to our climate draw on an expressive approach as the images rely on memory, experiences and recent events.

 

Burnie Print Prize: Laura Stark

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Laura Stark, Pathways VI 6th State, collagraph, blind embossing, collage.

 

Pathways VI 6th State is the last image of this series of prints originally inspired by the markings left by larvae on scribbly gums. It refers to the ancient pathways or dreamtime tracks of the  aborigines across the continent, the breadth of our landscape as seen from the air, and also the internal and external pathways or meanderings which we follow in the path of life.

In this series my procedure was to change, manipulate or reduce the plate from which they were printed in a number of different ways. This last version, a collage of print remnants,  encompasses the original theme but the pathways have become more tenuous, even fractured, perhaps an indication of uncertain times.

Burnie Print Prize: Neilton Clarke

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Here’s the next Sydney Printmaker who is a finalist in the Burnie Print Prize.

Ring Reader: Hossawa to the Sea

(Unique-state woodblock & copperplate relief print, collage & embossing, 2020).

Hossawa is a Hinohara-area waterfall on the mountainous Tokyo-Yamanashi border, its waters feeding Akigawa River, in turn Tama River, Tokyo Bay, and finally the sea. The experience of the locale feeds into and informs my studio activity, having spent two-plus decades living there.
Countless hours spent exploring its cedar & pine-clad inclines on scooter and on foot make for indelible impressions, its maple, camelia, azalea & hydrangea groves amplifying the marked seasonal changes with bursts of colour.
The work’s bell-like ovoid forms have been hand-printed directly from prepared cedar log-end offcuts sourced from mountainside outposts. Their pronounced granular striations, carrying a record of the summer-winter growth alternations over many years, make for a kind of logbook in more senses than one.
Seismic-prone, being awoken by tremors & shakes in the early hours is part of the fabric of the everyday there. The collage-aesthetic employed here, with its capacity for fissure, juxtaposition, and also containment, lends itself well to addressing such kinds of dislocation.

Burnie Print Prize: Gary Shinfield

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In 2020 fires raged through the Blue Mountains of NSW. The triptych Fire, smoke and ash was made in response to these events. In this relief print, iconic landforms – plateau, escarpment and valley – are subsumed and transformed by the effects of fire.

 

Landforms were created using the woodcut medium. The atmospheric effects of fire, smoke and ash were overprinted using pieces of etched and cut lino. A series of three prints was made.

 

Title: Fire, smoke and ash triptych

Medium: Relief print on three sheets of Rives BFK paper, 1/3series

Size: 99 x 186 cm

Year: 2020

 

 

Burnie Print Prize: Anna Russell

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Most of us can’t get down to Burnie to see the works in the Print Prize this time. I will be publishing  as many of the successful Sydney Printmakers works as I can here, together with the artists statements where available.

                                                                                                                                                                                    Anna Russell, Voyagers, woodblock, stencil, collage, 55×58 USP 2019

Voyagers

This is a whale’s eye view of voyaging from the harshness of the Antarctic to the warmth of calm subtropical waters, the land appearing from time to time on the horizon.  The voyage depends on successful avoidance of the land in an ocean of distracting sounds.

Tensions in this work suggest navigation into the unknown, facing risk, bracing for the unexpected. Safe harbours are hard to find. We’ve made progress internationally in saving whales from slaughter but they still live with hazards we have created.

Meanwhile we have our own voyage into the unknown as the climate changes. Can our work with the whales show us how to act collectively, to make order and balance out of the chaos of our current consuming?