IMPRINT: Survey of the Print Council of Australia at Parliament House, Canberra

Pressed for Time, 2017, archival pigment print, 31.3 x 23.2 cm. Edition: 30.
2017 Print Council of Australia Member Print Commission. Printer: Luke Ingram. 

My archival pigment print Pressed for Time (2017) has been curated into a special exhibition at Parliament House, Canberra. IMPRINT: Survey of the Print Council of Australia comprises 58 prints selected from over 600 works in the PCA Member Print Commission archive.

The exhibition includes works by Noel Counihan, Barbara Hanrahan, David Rose, Ray Beattie, Bea Maddock, Earle Backen, Ruth Faerber, Hertha Kluge-Pott, Olga Sankey, Judy Watson, Janet Dawson, Mary MacQueen, Raymond Arnold, G.W. Bot, Yvonne Boag, James Taylor, John Coburn, Jenuarrie Warrie, Maria Kozic, Wilma Tabacco, Rick Amor, Treahna Hamm, Robert Jacks, Bruno Leti, John Olsen, Michael Kempson, Susan Pickering, Andrew Ngungarrayi Martin, Belinda Fox, Georgia Thorpe, Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, Gosia Wlodarczak, Rebecca Mayo, Janet Parker-Smith, Rona Green, Sophia Szilagyi, Glen Mackie, Tama Favell, Elizabeth Banfield, David Fairbairn, Graeme Drendel, Deanna Hitti, Sue Poggioli, Maria Orsto, Samuel Tupou, Pia Larsen, Deborah Klein and Cat Poljski. 

In September 2017, Andrew Stephens, editor of the Print Council of Australia's journal IMPRINT, interviewed me about the making and meaning of Pressed for Time. You can read it HERE.

For further information, go to the Print Council of Australia website HERE:

IMPRINT: Survey of the Print Council of Australia 

Exhibition Area 

Level 1

Parliament House 

Canberra, ACT.

Exhibition hours: 9 am - 5 pm daily until Sunday 12 May.

LEAVES OF ABSENCE book launch and FALLEN WOMEN solo show

Page view from IMPRINT Spring 2017 Volume 52 Number 3

Paging through the current issue of the Print Council of Australia's quarterly publication, IMPRINT, I'm reminded with a jolt that the opening of Fallen Women, my forthcoming show at Tacit Contemporary Art is seriously nigh.

The exhibition, to which you're all invited, will span two gallery spaces. It marks the the solo debut of the experimental archival pigment prints (AKA phemographs) that have dominated my practice for the last two years.

The opening event will take place on Wednesday evening, 29 November between 6.30 - 8 pm. For those who can't make it, there will be an informal Meet the Artist event on Saturday 9 December from 2 - 4 pm. This is a crazy time of year (it's not called the Silly Season for nothing) but if you can't make it on either of these dates, I hope you'll have a chance to drop by before the show finishes its run on 17 December.

In the meantime, the precursor to the above project, my artist book, LEAVES OF ABSENCE, will be launched at the Melbourne Athenaeum Library this coming Friday, 24 November, with an opening address by Marguerite Brown, Manager of the Print Council of Australia.

Since its completion earlier this year, the book has been included in two major touring exhibitions and was also shortlisted for the Geelong Print Prize and Fremantle Arts Centre Print Awards. Thanks to the generosity and support of the Melbourne Athenaeum Library, it will finally have the stage entirely to itself.

In additional exciting news, the library recently acquired a copy of the book for its permanent collection and has invited me to be their artist-in-residence for Melbourne Rare Book Week in June/July 2018.

To preview LEAVES OF ABSENCE and learn more about the project, visit Moth Woman Press HERE. 

Fallen

Fallen, 2017, archival pigment print, 20 x 14.2 cm, edition: 66. Printers: Luke Ingram and Daisy Watkins-Harvey at Arten.

Yesterday's undertaking: numbering, titling, signing and hand-delivering the edition of Fallen, destined for Imaginings, an exchange portfolio curated by Rona Green.

Imaginings, comprising 66 prints by 67 artists, will be exhibited at Neospace, Melbourne from 1 – 19 December 2017. Further details will be posted nearer the time.

now and then - 50 Years of the PCA Print Commission

The past two years have seen a significant change of direction in my printmaking practice via an ongoing body of archival pigment prints collectively titled Leaves of Absence. 

I'm delighted to announce that Pressed for Time, a work from that series, is one of ten prints commissioned by the Print Council of Australia for the PCA Print Commission 2017.

There was an online launch of the commissioned prints early this morning. They will be unveiled in the flesh this evening between 5.30 - 7.30 in the exhibition now and then - 50 Years of the PCA Print Commission at Collins Place Gallery, Shop 19, Collins Place, 45 Collins Street, Melbourne.

For those who can't make it tonight, the gallery hours are Tuesday - Friday, 11 am - 5 pm. The exhibition runs until 18 August. (Full details are on the invitation above).

This is my fourth print commission for the PCA. The first, a large-scale linocut, was made in 1986, the year following my graduation from art school.

Below is a preview of this year's commissioned work, photographed recently in the interim between numbering, titling and signing the edition and hand delivering it to the Print Council of Australia.

Pressed for Time, 2017, archival pigment print, image size: 31.3 x 23.2 cm, paper size: 48.4 x 33 cm, edition: 30

LEAVES OF ABSENCE: 2017 FAC Arts Centre Print Award finalist and a recent acquisition

Page view of Leaves of Absence, 2017, artist book, archival inkjet prints, cloth cover,
edition: 10 plus 1 artist proof, 32.5 x 25.5 x 4.0 cm (closed) 32.5 x 55.0 x 4 cm (open).
Printer: Luke Ingram.

Further to my last post announcing that Leaves of Absence (2017) is a finalist in the 2017 Geelong acquisitive print awards, the artist book has been shortlisted for the 2017 Fremantle Arts Centre Print Award.

As followers of this blog will be aware, the book was recently exhibited in Between the Sheets - International artists' books 2017 at Gallery East, Perth WA and Australian Galleries Melbourne. As the show finished its Melbourne run, I was delighted to learn that Leaves of Absence has been acquired for the permanent collection of Monash University Library.

For selected views of the book in situ at Australian Galleries (superbly photographed by Gracia Haby and Louise Jennison) go to Moth Woman Press HERE. 

From little things big things grow

In a recent post, I described one of the Eucalyptus leaves in the Leaves of Absence series as Thumbelina sized. The same description applies to the leaves presented in this post. In fact, in its original form, the leaf featuring in the digital proof second from bottom below, is little bigger than my thumbnail.

As shown above, the tiny hand painted leaves reside in a miniature plan cabinet, one of three that I own. The first of these, acquired some years ago in a Melbourne thrift shop, contains a collection of miniature watercolours. It's titled A Cabinet of Insect Women and is part of the group exhibition From the Bower - patterns of collecting currently showing at Warrnambool Art Gallery.

I've developed this work since the show opened, but very much hope that the diminutive cabinet and its contents can be part of the Ballarat leg of the exhibition when it opens on July 29.

The digital proofs directly below are offshoots of this leaf art. They are all works in progress and will be exhibited at a later date.

Prints for Portugal

One of this week's chores was packaging Memory 1 (2016, archival pigment print, 32 x 23 cm, ed. 1/20) for its flight to Portugal. The print will be part of 3rd GLOBAL PRINT 2017 in Douro, Portugal, which runs from 1 August - 30 September.

Memory 12 and Memory 14 (both 2016, archival pigment prints, 32 x 23 cm, ed. 1/20) - see below - are also on their way to Portugal, in this case for the 9th INTERNATIONAL PRINTMAKING EXHIBITION OF DOURO 2018. Although it's not until next year, the organisers of 3rd GLOBAL PRINT 2017 have offered the option of sending the prints now. Packing all the works together certainly saves on postage and handling, but best of all, in the midst (well, almost) of a particularly busy year, it gives me one less thing to have to think about!

Thank you to Nuno Canelas, Curator and Director of the Douro Biennial and Global Print for inviting me to participate in both events and thanks, as always, to Master Printer Luke Ingram at Arten.

Tower Hill, Part 2

I'm still processing (both literally and figuratively) the results of recent visits to Tower Hill that prompted my first ventures into the landscape genre.

As previously noted, key points of reference for these archival pigment prints in progress are Romanticism (in particular, the works of Caspar David Friedrich) and Victorian era landscape photography and painting. Foremost among the latter is colonial artist Eugene von Guérard's Tower Hill (1855), presently hanging in Warrmanbool Art Gallery.

Gordon Morrison, Director of the Art Gallery of Ballarat, informs me that in 2018 the gallery will be mounting an extensive exhibition devoted to von Guérard, including rarely seen sketches and working drawings. I can hardly wait, although sadly this will be what Gordon calls his retirement show.

My own von Guérard-inspired project will soon have go on temporary hold as I move onto projects with more pressing deadlines. I'll certainly be returning to Tower Hill, however. Meanwhile, you can view other works from the series by clicking HERE. To see more of Eugene von Guérard's work, including exciting news of a painting that was recently rediscovered, click HERE.

A Gold Letter Day

Leaves of Absence (closed). Linen box with gold debossed text and image,
32.5 (H) x 25.5 (W) x 4 cm (D). Edition: 10, plus 1 artist proof

Yesterday was a red letter day, or rather a gold letter day. The boxes for the artist book, Leaves of Absence, were completed, marking the final stage of this almost two-year long project. Leaves of Absence is a limited edition of 10, plus one artist proof.

The closed book is pictured above, followed directly below by selected page views. To preview additional pages, visit Moth Woman Press HERE.

'Elemental' opens in Adelaide

On 10 April the Goldfields Printmakers exhibition Elemental completed a successful run at the Visual Arts Centre, La Trobe University, Bendigo. It has since journeyed to South Australia and is now set to open at Light Square Gallery, Adelaide College of the Arts tomorrow evening, 12 May, from 6-8pm. The show includes six of my archival pigment prints from the Leaves of Absence series.

Deborah Klein, Leaves of Absence, 2016, archival pigment prints. Installation view, Visual Arts Centre,
 Latrobe University, Bendigo, February 2016.

Vicki Reynolds, Studio Head, Printmaking, Adelaide College of the Arts, Adjunct Lecturer, School of Humanities and Creative Arts Faculty of Education, Humanities and Law, Flinders University will launch the show. If you are in town, do call in, either for a celebratory drink on opening night, or during the show's run.

Elemental is part of the Print Council of Australia's Year of Print, commemorating 50 years of the Print Council of Australia. 

The exhibition concludes on 2 June.

Memory #20

Pictured above is Memory #20, the most recently completed digital image from the continuing Leaves of Absence series. As I mentioned in a recent Blog Post (Memory #17, Tuesday, April 19) most of these works have a long gestation period - this one far more so than any of the others to date. I’ve made so many different states of Memory #20 that in the end it became impossible to clearly focus on which ones worked and which didn’t – or indeed, if any of them had any merit at all.

Yesterday morning I was looking over the latest proofs and just as my eyes began to glaze over, there was an all too rare moment of clarity in which I recognized that the version of the work reproduced above was, at long last, The One (or pretty close to it). 

Pictured below is the genesis of the work, a silhouette drawn onto a eucalyptus leaf with Winsor and Newton pigment markers. (The abovementioned blog post outlines the process from go to whoa).

The following “proof sheet” is a very small sample of the umpteen trial proofs I’ve made over the past several weeks.

Heralding Shakespeare's 400th Birthday and Autumn's Onset

A leaf from one of William Shakespeare's books, The Sonnets (Sonnet 73) and one of mine, Leaves of Absence (Memory #19):

Memory #19, 2016, archival pigment print 

Sonnet LXXIII

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. 
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed, whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
   This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
   To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.

Memory #17

Featured in this post are selected development stages of Memory #17, a work in progress from Leaves of Absence, an ongoing series of archival pigment prints. For the benefit of first-time visitors to this blog, all of the leaves were sourced from Eucalyptus trees in the Victorian Goldfields town of Newstead and all of the works focus on the virtual absence of Chinese women from the goldfields during the Australian gold rush. (In 1861 the Australian population included 38,337 Chinese men, but only eleven Chinese women). My research includes an investigation of historic Chinese hairstyles.

Initially each leaf is pressed for only a short period - a few days at most - just enough to ensure a flat surface, but not long enough for its colour to fade. A clear acrylic sealer is then applied to both sides of the leaf. At this point (donning my Winsor and Newton Global Ambassador hat) I draw a simple outline onto the surface with a white Winsor and Newton Pigment Marker. The silhouette is completed with a black W&N pigment marker. Although this is by no means the finished work, it is a key stage in its development.

Now the digital component begins. The leaf is photographed with my iPad and a series of filters are applied, all of them from iPad apps and most of them used very differently from the purposes for which they were originally designed. Not for the first time, I have to thank my friend, distinguished iPad artist Deborah McMillion for her suggestions, observations and app advice.

It is not uncommon for me to make dozens of digital proofs, often over a period of several weeks - sometimes months - before arriving at one that meets my satisfaction. This one is no exception. The proofs below (1-4 from bottom) show some variations of the same image in order of its development. Like the other works in the series, Memory #17 is intended to suggest old photographs or postcards, which, like memories, have faded with time.

Selected works from Leaves of Absence will be part of a forthcoming artist book. (See Moth Woman Press HERE and HERE).