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Thursday, September 12, 2024

Early linocuts at Gippsland Art Gallery

Many thanks to Lesley Duxbury for these photos of two of my early linocuts, currently on exhibit at Gippsland Art Gallery, Sale, one of my favourite regional galleries.

Pictured top: Sometimes Jenny took long and lonely walks along the long and lonely beach, 1988, from the Pirate Jenny Prints suite of linocuts (1987-88). The point of departure for the work was the titular character in The Threepenny Opera, a jazz-influenced opera by Bertolt Brecht (book and lyrics) and Kurt Weill (music). It premiered at Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin in 1928. Ostensibly set in Victorian London, the opera is a savage satire of Germany’s Weimar Republic. In this series, I took Jenny out of London/Berlin and placed her in the red light district of my home town, St Kilda. (It has been done since, in 2010, as a theatre production with the great Paul Capsis as Pirate Jenny, but as far as I know, I was the first to do it)! 

Most of the works in the Pirate Jenny suite owe a debt to German Expressionism, in the case of this work, the German Expressionist film The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, 1920, (Dir. Robert Wiene). 


The second linocut, the absurdist A Man, a Woman and a Duck, 1996, also set on St Kilda beach, is a more playful and affectionate homage to my home town. (Image 2, second from top).

Second view, top: Susan Fraser, One, two, slide, Back, two, slide, 2013, linocut. 

All works: Collection Gippsland Art Gallery, Sale.

I understand the works will be on view for three months.