See this blogpost from the Print Council of Australia, with a Q & A with Karen Ball, and if you are not a member already, take the time to join. You will be rewarded with the wonderful Imprint Magazine, and lots of interesting opportunities and articles.
Artists in Conversation with the Curator: Karen Ball
Since it appears that To the Edges will not reopen to the public, we will post these ‘conversations,’ together with the image under discussion, in a series. The curator, Katherine Roberts, has sent questions for each of the artists to answer.
How does your work address the theme ‘to the edges’?
My work emerged from a period of introspection at the beginning of the covid pandemic. Being isolated from family interstate was a catalyst for fluctuating moods. The boundaries between consciousness and dreams became blurred. It was analogous with the concept of ‘intimate immensity’ as alluded to by Gaston Bachelard. The figures are representative of the self – waiting and moving from the real to the dreamlike edges.
Can you describe the technical process you went through to achieve the finished work and what technical challenges you encountered along the way?
I made large plates using dry point and carborundum. The actual making of the plates which are each 120cm x 60cm was therapeutic.
I decided on chine colle for the wings to slightly shift the tonal quality of the image.
What do you see as the role of Sydney Printmakers for the next 60 years?
I hope Sydney Printmakers encourages new and younger members who bring enthusiasm and energy to the group.
How do you see the role of printmaking, in general, contributing to the conversation about contemporary art practice?
Printmaking as an artform is so diverse . It continues to inspire such creativity. I am certain it will always be so.
Vale Bernhardine Mueller by Karen Ball and Denise Scholz Wulfing
Vale Bernhardine Mueller
To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Bernhardine Mueller, who passed away in December 2019, is fondly remembered by the printmaking community as an inspirational artist, generous teacher, colleague and dear friend. She had the ability to inspire and nurture creativity in others while pursuing her own artistic journey. Each of her students received individual attention and art colleagues knew she was always available as a friendly, supportive listener. Bernhardine was a friend to so many people in numerous printmaking areas.
Bernhardine established the printmaking studio at Ku Ring Gai Art Centre and Lane Cove Centre House and taught at both for many years. As one of her students at KAC in 1990, I(Karen)was immediately enveloped in the warm, friendly atmosphere she created. Many of those students became lifelong friends of Bernhardine. She was very involved in Lane Cove Art Society winning many awards from there and other competitions for her prints, miniatures and artist books.
Bernhardine also held numerous workshops throughout NSW and Queensland, in particular Gunnedah and Mitchell School of Arts, Bathurst. These workshops introduced students to printmaking and became the foundation for burgeoning art careers. For many years Bernhardine enjoyed a creative partnership with teachers and secondary school students in the art studios at Masada College, one of whom was chosen for HSC Art Express exhibition.
As a long term member of Sydney Printmakers, Bernhardine instigated and participated in many exhibitions. She always welcomed and supported new members. Similarly, Bernhardine was a long time, loved member of The Australian Society of Miniature Art. Her dedication to printmaking endured even as she became increasingly unwell. Bernhardine curated an exhibition at Orange Regional Gallery in 2018 with a group of fellow printmaker colleagues connected by their use of Richard Swinburne’s etching presses. She continued to show her work in Sydney Printmakers and other group shows into 2019.
Bernhardine was a printmakers’ printmaker. Experimenting with the technique, over printing with multiple blocks, reprinting the same plate many times in different colours, collaging, cropping, hand-colouring, for ever on the search for the best result for that particular print. Her wit, humour and purposeful use of mixed metaphors for dramatic effect were very funny. This humour and love of words came out in her miniature etchings, playing on words, sayings and gently poking fun at people, society and art.
Bernhardine shared a love of Australian flora and fauna with me (Denise). This constant source of inspiration, in particular a love of birds, meant we exchanged sightings on Brush Turkey behaviour, Currawong antics, Magpie carols and the amazing character of the White Winged Choughs at her beloved son Michael’s place in the Capertee Valley.
It was an honour to know Bernhardine. Her life was full and creative but she always had time for her many friends. She seemed to know when someone needed encouragement or some words of wisdom. We will miss her but her light will shine on through all those she inspired.
Group Exhibition – Denise Scholz-Wulfing, Karen Ball, Bernhardine Mueller, Elizabeth Pozega
Of Site and Connection – Gary Shinfield
Here is an essay by Karen Ball on Gary Shinfield’s exhibition.
Enclosure and the river triptych, 3 unique state relief prints each 120 x 60 cm on Chinese handmade paper, 2014
Of Site and Connection – reflections on a personal journey.
Gary Shinfield is known for large printed works on paper which inhabit a gallery space like wandering explorers, not lost, just contemplating the terrain. This artist records topographical, archaeological and fleeting human forms with a unique gestural mark but his overriding concern is connection to a site on a physical and spiritual level. He has traversed much of Australia and several overseas countries pursuing that goal. The artwork made from each of these expeditions intertwines to form an immersive visual diary.
In 2010 Gary Shinfield spent two weeks printmaking with Basil Hall in Skopelos, Greece. Intrinsically drawn to the local rock formations and remnant buildings, the term ‘enclosures’ was introduced by the artist to describe their physical and emotional presence – a trope that subsequently appeared and reappeared in the evolving language of the print series.
Unknown to him at the time, the printing matrices, together with flotsam and jetsam gathered from the Greek shoreline, would become something of a palimpsest when transported home to Australia. Shinfield then worked further into the original plates and made additional ones as part of an ongoing journey. Ensuing circumstances would take him and his treasured collection of creative ephemera to different sites and further connections in NSW. The etchings, woodblocks, prints and found objects which emerged from Greece were physically or emotionally carried with him to each location.
In late 2013, while sitting on the veranda of his brother’s home on the family property in Eungella, northern New South Wales Shinfield continued carving woodblocks. Below the veranda, the ever present sound of the Oxley River accompanied him as he worked and permeated his creative consciousness. Aware this period of time was finite, his mark-making nourished through immersion in the emotional and physical presence of family, Shinfield proceeded to record it without words. He soon became aware there were parallels with the familial, emotional enclosures of Eungella and his earlier interpretation of remnant, archeologically significant building foundations in Skopelos. He wondered, however, if his depiction of ‘enclosure’ co- existed with images drawn from nature or presented an ambiguity between harmony and separation. He questioned whether the structures he seemed compelled to represent were quiet places for contemplation or impervious cells from which escape was difficult. Paradoxically, through the artist’s compositional integration and layering of enclosure motifs with meandering water courses (a life force) security, renewal and protection are suggested to the viewer. The series titled River and Enclosure 1-16 represent the first ‘river site’ in the body of work made for the exhibition, Two Rivers.
The following year saw a change of personal circumstances, another site and another water course – a pool in Medlow Bath, the Blue Mountains, NSW where Shinfield relocated in early 2015. The pool is part of a beautiful, vast garden with numerous paths. Surrounded by natural bush tracks, this tranquil, pristine location offers abundant space, the opportunity for walking and contemplation. While the series, Maze, made by Shinfield in Medlow Bath, makes some reference to visual and natural phenomena of the location, it is overwhelmed by a sense of impending loss. The ‘pool’ becomes the ground on which complications of the maze are imprinted. This chapter of Shinfield’s work physically and psychologically traces a ritual, daily walk overshadowed by emerging circumstances. Where the earlier enclosures suggest the possibility of sanctuary and protection, the Maze series signifies loss and letting go. Pathways are presented as impenetrable obstacles to their maker.
Shinfield also made ink drawings at that time with dominant figurative elements and a number of lino blocks based on them. The drawings have an unintentional, visceral connection to the preceding chapters of his journey. Their spare, stark quality reveals much about love and loss. The final prints made in this series, titled Game and End Game, overtly reference the human condition and an ending where the outcome is already known. This small group of final powerful yet contemplative works in the series are a nadir – the point of letting go. Each gently touches time and location. Geographical landmarks are anthropomorphised to suggest phantom figures moving through and beyond the picture plane while the notion of journey connects each work to the other.
The use of semi-transparent, hand-made Chinese paper and ‘ghost prints’ for which Shinfield is known intensifies the ephemeral, fragile quality of the work and is analogous with the fleeting moment, impermanence and passages of life. His prints on Chinese paper, routinely exhibited in a free falling manner (without frames), identifies them not only as precious art objects but imbues each with the ability to move in the gentle current of air generated in the gallery space. That is, they are at one with the viewer.
The concept of ‘reverie,’ through which an individual is able to descend deeply within himself, savour solitude and reconnect with personal history, can be said to inform the work of this artist. Gary Shinfield navigates through a personal landscape of place and time but leaves the pathway open for us to follow. Two Rivers, not only evokes deeply remembered emotions for its maker, it finds a common thread called compassion, and holds it.
‘At the bottom of every reverie, we find that being which deepens everything, a permanent being’
Karen Ball BVA (Hons 1), MVA
Artist and teacher
Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Reverie (La Poetique de la Reverie) , Presses Universitaires de France, 1960, translation by Grossman Publishers Inc, 1969. First published as Beacon, Boston, USA, paperback by arrangement with Grossman Publishers , 1971. Chp. 2, Reveries on Reverie, p.82
The Game 1/4 and End Game UP, mixed media prints, 77 x 70 each, 2015
Lines of Communication: Karen Ball, Janet Parker-Smith, Elizabeth Pozega
Opening of Sydney Printmakers Exhibition at Cowra Regional Gallery.
The opening of our exhibition went very well, with a small but interested and informed audience. Karen Ball gave an interesting floor talk, which was well received.