Q: What is your relationship to printmaking and how did you
develop this interest?
A: Through the years my
relationship to printmaking has shifted and changed. In the immediate post-art
school period and for a long time afterwards, relief printmaking was my primary
means of creative expression. For the last fifteen years or so, however, my
work has come to be fairly evenly divided between printmaking, painting,
drawing and, more recently, zines and artist books.
When I enrolled in art
school in 1983, it was as a painting major. But almost from the start, I found
myself drawn to printmaking and soon switched majors. There has always been a narrative
element to my work that I sensed would be better suited to a more graphic
medium. I was particularly attracted to the direct nature of single block
linocuts. For many years I'd admired the woodcuts of Albrecht Dürer, Hans
Holbein and the German Expressionists. An investigation of the prints of
Australian modernist artist Margaret Preston and her contemporaries also
fuelled my growing interest in the medium.
Q: How did you approach your submission for the PCA Print
Commission 2017?
A: For the past two years
I've been developing a body of work, collectively titled Leaves of Absence. It's my first foray into archival pigment
prints. I'm entirely self-taught, with no previous experience with or technical
knowledge of the medium.
The first works in the
series were made for what was supposedly a one-off project, but I found myself
increasingly attracted to this completely new way of working, even as I was
still feeling my way with it. In time, my confidence with and commitment to the
medium grew and it has developed into a significant extension of my printmaking
practice.
My three previous works
selected for the PCA print commission (the first dating from 1986, the year
after I graduated from art school) have each represented key developmental
stages in my imagery. So the time felt right to submit a work that reflected
its newest direction.
Q: What are some of the foundation ideas that have guided the
creation of the visual content of the work you submitted?
A: For the past six years
I've been dividing my time between Melbourne and the Victorian Goldfields city
of Ballarat, primarily in the latter, where I have a house and studio. During
that time, I've become increasingly interested in the history of the area and
its surrounds.
Pressed for Time is
part of a body of work focusing on the absence of Chinese women from the goldfields
during the Australian gold rush. The eucalyptus leaf in this work and all those
in the series were gathered in the tiny Victorian Goldfields town of Newstead.
The forest floor is still dotted with holes, the last traces of the 3000
Chinese miners who once lived and worked there. The miners' plight on the Goldfields
is well documented, but almost nothing is known about the women who remained in
China. The silhouettes hand-painted onto each leaf represent one of those
unknown women.
Q: How does it relate to your broader body of work?
A: Lost and hidden
histories are dominant themes in my work. Doomed to anonymity, my characters are
sometimes masked, or stand with their backs turned to the viewer. More
recently, as in Pressed for Time,
they appear in the guises of Shadow Women. Silhouetted figures first appeared
in my work in 2013, most notably in Tall
Tales, a series of one-of-a-kind vertical concertina artist books.
Q: What were some of the technical challenges involved?
A: At first everything
about this body of work was challenging, as it was completely uncharted territory.
From the day I gathered the first eucalyptus leaves in Newstead, I worked
intuitively. I had no set guidelines or instructions to work from and had no
idea if the images would actually work as prints.
In the past, I printed
most of my linocuts myself. On occasion I've worked with some wonderful master
printers, but in every case the image was already pretty well resolved.
The digital prints were
an entirely different matter. For a number of practical reasons, including necessary
access to specialist equipment, I had no choice but to work with a printer, and
in much closer proximity than I had in the past. I was already way out of my
comfort zone and found the prospect incredibly daunting. I knew it was vital to
find a printer who understood the ideas, aesthetic, and visual language of the
work and wouldn't be judgemental about my lack of experience in this area.
Through a fortuitous recommendation from a fellow printmaker, I found just that
in Luke Ingram and his colleague, Daisy Watkins-Harvey, at Arten in
Abbotsford. I trust their judgment and have learned a great deal from them.
They encouraged my fledgling efforts from the start and on a number of
occasions have helped me to further refine the imagery during the crucial
proofing stage.
Q: What other projects are you working on?
A: At present I'm working
towards a solo show at Tacit Contemporary Art in Melbourne. Fallen Women,
my first exhibition of archival pigment prints, will run from 29 November
- 17 December 2017.
