2016
Cover: Sam Golding, Rosie the Riveter (after Arcimboldo) 2014 (detail)
The National Works on Paper (NWOP) has become the most prestigious award and exhibition of its type in Australia. Launched in 1973 as the Spring Festival of Drawing by the inaugural MPRG Director Alan McCulloch and alternating each year with the Prints Acquisitive, the prizes were incorporated in 1998 to become the National Works on Paper. Acquisitions through these awards has resulted in the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery building an impressive collection of works by well-known Australian artists including Fred Williams, John Olsen, Rick Amor, Charles Blackman, Gloria Petyarre, Sally Smart, Vernon ah Kee and John Nixon. Almost 1000 artists from around Australia submitted works for the 2016 National Works on Paper. Sixty-six works were selected by the panel of judges who included Kirsty Grant, Director & CEO, Heide Museum of Modern Art; Roger Butler, Senior Curator, Australian Prints and Drawings, National Gallery of Australia and Jane Alexander, Director of Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery. The works selected celebrate paper in a variety of forms and present a survey of some of the best Australian contemporary artists currently working with or on paper. The Mornington Peninsula Shire has provided critical funding support since the 1970s towards the MPRG’s acclaimed National Works on Paper exhibition. We also thank Beleura House & Garden (the Tallis Foundation) for the $15,000 major prize, the Friends of Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery and the Ursula Hoff Foundation for the Ursula Hoff Institute Emerging Artist Acquisitive Art Award 2016 for a work on paper. Mornington Peninsula Shire Mayor, Cr Graham Pittock
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The diversity and dexterity in the ways paper can be used is on full show in the 2016 National Works on Paper. Through printing, drawing, folding, sculpting and collage, paper is at the forefront of artistic experimentation. Paper has always been a medium through which the artist’s mark can be captured quickly and increasingly we are seeing this practice pushed to new and exciting dimensions. The selected finali ts in the National Works on Paper present a range of contemporary ideas within the parameters of this medium. We are thrilled with the number of Indigenous artists represented in this exhibition – double the number from the 2014 award. Collaborations and sculptural works that push the structural limitations of the medium also feature, extending and deepening the parameters of what a ‘work on paper’ is. Paper, that highly fl xible and versatile medium, ascends to great heights as our 2016 artists rip, shred, manipulate, stretch, embellish and embed paper in their new works. To the hundreds of artists who submitted works in the 2016 NWOP our gratitude is of the highest order. Many deserving artworks were submitted and it was a tough and gruelling process to reduce these down to a final shortlist of sixty-six works. Congratulations to the selected artists; we are privileged to have the opportunity to display your work and present an exhibition of such wonderful examples of leading, contemporary practice on paper from across Australia. I’d also like to thank the MPRG team for their commitment, professionalism and enthusiasm for this important exhibition. Special thanks are deserving of the whole team but particularly Danny Lacy, Narelle Russo, Peta Collings, Rowena Wiseman, Sharon Lozsan and Stina Haug. Jane Alexander, MPRG Director
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ESSAY Maria Zagala Associate Curator of prints, drawings and photographs, Art Gallery of South Australia For many artists paper has held a special place in their artistic practice – it is where they test their ideas, explore a proposition and take risks, with pencil, ink or pen. Paper as a medium encourages, somehow, an artist’s most direct expression. Its status can be ascribed to its fl xibility, portability and to its relative affordability. Artists have been attracted to the paradoxical properties of paper since its use fi st became widespread in the Renaissance. For those who have come to appreciate its potential, this is no surprise as paper is an object with remarkable qualities: translucent and opaque, soft and hard, smooth and textured, strong and brittle, easily torn yet capable of withstanding tremendous pressure of the hand or printing press. And just as the properties of paper are varied, the mark-making that it inspires is similarly diverse. Christian Rattemeyer, in his survey of recent developments in drawing practice, notes that many artists working in the medium have returned to the figu ative and employ their art in the service of storytelling.[1] There has been a noticeable embrace of marginal historical traditions from ‘caricature and comic-book illustration; to the detailed illustrative tradition of botanical, anatomical, and zoological prints and drawings that go back to the 19th century.’[2] These developments are evident in the work of the sixty-six finali ts in the 2016 National Works on Paper (NWOP) exhibition. The return to 19th century visual vocabularies is evident in the stylistic quotations of colonial prints seen in Robert Hague and Rew Hanks’s works and Martin King’s etching Imperfectly Known, 2016, which draws on 19th century illustrations of Australian fauna. Other artists such as Matt Coyle and TextaQueen engage with the history of illustration and comic-book art. The desire to share stories – so fundamental to our connection as humans – is, above all else, a desire to excavate personal memory. This process, when 4
given visual rather than written or oral form, is unexpected and draws on what constitutes identity. This is evident in several powerful works, in particular Indigenous artist Roy McIvor’s drypoint etching The Removal, 2015. The print depicts a tragic event in his life and his people’s past: the forced removal and subsequent internment of Guugu Yimithirr men, women and children during World War Two. They were removed from the Cape Bedford Mission, in far north Queensland, and interned near Rockhampton as a result of government paranoia. As farcical as it seems now, the government was fearful that the Guugu Yimithirr on the Lutheran mission might, through their loyalty to the missionaries who had German heritage, use their bush skills to help the Japanese during a possible invasion.[3] The forced removal and internment led to up to a third of the community perishing before the survivors were final y returned, seven years later, to Cape Bedford. One of those who died was McIvor’s younger sister.[4] Aged ten at the time, McIvor vividly recalls the sensory details of the traumatic event. He writes: Army trucks arrived one day in May 1942 and our community of 285 people was forced onto a steamboat without any food, water or warm clothing, then by train to Woorabinda Aboriginal Reserve west of Rockhampton, a distance of 1500 kilometres. It was very cold at night sleeping on the floor.[5] In his etching McIvor depicts multiple episodes from different time periods on the one plate. The modes of transportation used by the army dominate the image: boats, aeroplanes, trains and trucks ensnare the Guugu Yimitharr in a net. In the foreground, the large steamboat, the Poomba, is shown crowded with figu es, while armed soldiers round people up. The guns are disproportionately large, conveying the fear of the child. In the upper left McIvor shows the burial of those who did not survive the conditions of their forced removal. The melancholy inherent in the remembrance of childhood is evident in Jennifer Mills’s watercolour In the echo chamber (1982 ‘Colours Fly Away’ on Countdown 9,975 Views), 2016. The artist revisits an episode from her adolescence, when as a high school student she attended the filming of the television program Countdown. Through delicate touch, and layers of wash, Mills suggests the tenderness of her age, and the fugitive character of memory. 5
The return to childhood memories is, in the case of several female artists, bound to an examination of how their subjectivity has been formed under patriarchal pressure. Deborah Kelly’s stop motion film Lying Women, 2016, examines the legacy of the Western art canon, which she discovered as a high school student through reproductions in art books and encyclopedias. She notes: ‘I studied the European canon at a triple remove: as a girl, as an antipodean girl, and as an antipodean girl who only saw the paintings through cheap approximations of European glory on printed paper.’[6] Kelly’s work draws attention to the strangeness of the ubiquitousness of the naked female body in European painting. By emphasising the material quality of outdated reference books produced in large numbers until the advent of the internet – their faded colours and cheap paper – she renders the images ludicrous and shabby. Yet Kelly’s work is not just about the past. Sexism continues to shape our culture, and her identity and career as an artist, in real ways. Similarly, Katherine Hattam was motivated by a desire to give voice to a feminist reading of a well-known colonial story, which has been represented by a number of contemporary male artists.[7] Her charcoal drawing Thinking About William Buckley, 2016, overturns expectations of Buckley’s representation in historical and contemporary art. An escaped convict, Buckley was accepted by the Wathaurong tribe in south west Victoria and lived among them from 1803 until 1835 when he chose to re-engage with white society. Buckley learnt the Wathaurong’s language and, it is believed, married a Wathaurong woman and possibly fathered a child.[8] In contemporary and historical representations Buckley is often depicted as an isolated figu e clad in possum skins.[9] Hattam immersed herself in the art, books and films made about him and asks: ‘Where are the women? The Wathaurong?’[10] In her charcoal drawing there is no heroic figu e. Instead, Hattam represents a kitchen table (which serves as her working space) with its paintbrushes and coffee pot, and depicts the projections of her imagination as a mosaic of elements drawn from her own investigations. She bases these elements on sketches she made at sites associated with Buckley, including Buckley’s Cave at Queenscliff, Buckley’s Falls at Fyansford and Buckley’s Well at Breamlea. Hattam’s drawing depicts details of the coastal landscape, flo a observed around Barwon Heads, as well as the Wathaurong’s eel traps.[11] 6
The importance of place to our concept of self is a thread that is woven through the work of many artists in this exhibition. Raymond Arnold has dedicated over three decades to exploring the compromised, ruined landscape near Queenstown in western Tasmania where he lives. Since 2011 he has worked annually at a camp on the edge of Mt Lyell, the copper mine that has operated for over a century. Despite the destruction wrought by mining, Arnold’s digital print Etching Ghost/ Ghost Mountain Acacia, 2016, is a tribute to the regenerative potential of nature.[12] Working on a large scale, Arnold seeks to immerse the viewer in the grandeur of the ‘churned earth’ at Mt Lyell, recording the return of foliage and undergrowth.[13] Indeed, the digital print, which has its genesis in the slow process of intaglio, is part of a series that comprises eighty plates and is over fi e metres long. Arnold, who started using digital technology in recent years, uses the possibilities of the new medium to create a ‘ghost’ image of his original plate, reversing and echoing its presence at the same time.[14] The degraded, then recovering, land is presented by Arnold in diptych form: it is both a record of direct observation and a re-imagining of the Mt Lyell site. While the sixty-six finali ts in the NWOP prize use a variety of techniques and address wide-ranging thematic concerns, the works themselves share certain characteristics. Each artwork maps a particular terrain as the artist works on its surface – every mark creating, elaborating, defining and redefining a metaphorical space. The worlds that these distinctive works evoke range from the imaginary to records of observation and conceptual processes. What do these individual works reveal collectively? A longing to make sense of life and its complexities, a sense that history casts a long shadow and that forces – ecological, historical, cultural – shape our existence. It starts with a mark on paper.
Author’s acknowledgements: My thanks to Josef Lumley and Anna Zagala for editorial advice, and Katherine Hattam and Raymond Arnold for their insights in the preparation of this essay. 7
Footnotes: 1 Christian Rattemeyer, ‘Drawing Today’, in Vitamin D2: New Perspectives in Drawing. London and New York: Phaidon Press, 2015, p. 10. 2 ibid. 3 Roy McIvor, artist statement, MPRG, 2016. 4 ibid. 5 ibid. 6 Deborah Kelly, artist statement, MPRG, 2016. 7 Philip Davey’s At the Water Hole, 1995, First night alone, 1995, Transportation, 1995; Jan Senbergs’ Otway night, 1994 and Buckley’s cave, 1996; Juan Davila’s Juanito Laguna, 1994 and Buckley’s return, 1999; and Geoff Lowe’s Buckley’s chance, 1983–85. 8 Katherine Hattam, artist statement, MPRG, 2016. 9 Brian Hubber, ‘William Buckley: Rediscovered. A Curator’s Perspective’, in William Buckley: Rediscovered. Geelong: Geelong Gallery, 2001, p. 28. Hubber notes Buckley’s story was painted by Frederick Woodhouse, 1861; Oswald Rose Campbell, 1869; H.L. van der Houten, 1878; and Blamire Young, 1901. The exhibition catalogue checklist provides a comprehensive list of works from the 19th century and those made by contemporary artists. 10 Katherine Hattam, artist statement, MPRG, 2016. 11 Katherine Hattam, in conversation with the author, 21 May 2016. 12 Raymond Arnold, artist statement, MPRG, 2016. 13 Raymond Arnold, in conversation with the author, 20 May 2016. 14 ibid.
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THE WORKS
9
10
Belinda Allen
The Timeless Land/Wentworth 2014
Tony Ameneiro
Heads over Heads 2016
11
12
Raymond Arnold
Etching Ghost/Ghost Mountain Acacia 2016
Lyn Ashby
A Morning in May 2015
13
14
Gunjan Aylawadi
Geometric Zen Garden – Waterfall 2016
Elizabeth Banfield
it’s not the same 2014
15
16
Deborah June Beaumont
Eightfold 2015
Damiano Bertoli
Adriana and Silvia 2015
17
18
Sue Beyer
DisLocation 2016
Kate Beynon
Masked Ogre Dancers 2014–5
19
20
Damian Broomhead
William Blake, Bennelong And The Tiger At The Tower Of London, 1793 2015
Kathryn Camm
Untitled (on paper) 2015
21
22
Susanna Castleden
1:1 Wing Tip CRJ 2015
Angela Cavalieri
Ragionando 2015 (detail)
23
24
Neilton Clarke
Loaded Beauty 2015
Ray Coffey
Samuel the Addict 2016
25
26
Matt Coyle
To the Death 2014 (detail)
David Fairbairn
Portrait of J.L. No 2 2014
27
28
Yanni Floros
A Cut Above 2015
Dianne Fogwell
Honour Guards 2016 (detail)
29
30
David Frazer
The Text Message 2016
Sam Golding
Rosie the Riveter (after Arcimboldo) 2014
31
32
Jackie Gorring
Brickaway 2016
Gracia Haby and Louise Jennison
Because I Like You 2016 (detail)
33
34
Marie Hagerty
Wasp 2015
Robert Hague
Natives on the River (after Glover) 2016
35
36
Rew Hanks
A Touch of Home 2015
Katherine Hattam
Thinking About William Buckley 2016
37
38
Mark Hilton
Half Flush (Spades) 2016 (detail)
Mark Hislop
The Book That Jack Ate 2016
39
40
Judy Holding
Diary 1 2015 (detail)
Ben Holgate
The Bombing of Darwin 2015 (detail)
41
42
Jake Holmes
Kilburn 1 2015
Eamonn Jackson
Shadowland 2015
43
44
Claude Jones
Hare-Brain 2016
Deborah Kelly
Lying Women 2016 (detail)
45
46
Gladdy Kemarre
Awelye 2015
Pauletta Kerinauia
Kulama 2016
47
48
Martin King
Imperfectly Known 2016
Heather Koowootha (Jungarra)
The Landlady 2015
49
50
John Loane and Sangeeta Sandrasegar
And though greatly he failed, more greatly he dared 2016
Glen Mackie (Kei Kalak)
Kek 2015
51
52
Lily Mae Martin
Wrestling three 2015
Penny Mason
Between Waves and Tides – Tasmanian Coastline # 2 2016
53
54
Roy McIvor
The Removal 2015
Fiona McMonagle
Wonky 2014
55
56
Jennifer Mills
In the echo chamber (1982 ‘Colours Fly Away’ on Countdown 9,975 Views) 2016
Glenn Morgan
Self Portrait in Shed 2016
57
58
Joanne Morris
Les Twentyman 2014
Andy Mullens
Exchange 2015
59
60
Peter Mungkuri
Ngura (Country) 2016
Janice Murray
Jilmara 2015
61
62
Becc OrszĂ g
The Source of All Things (Birth of The Rivers) 2016 (detail)
Daniel O’Shane
Aib Ene Zogo ni Pat (Story of Aib and the sacred waterhole) 2015
63
64
Jim Pavlidis
Relic 2015
Josie Kunoth Petyarre
Sugar Bag 2015
65
66
Tom Polo
Judgemental Earring/Out Of The Shadows, Into The Light 2015
Peter Robertson
Untitled 7 from the series The Drifters 2016
67
68
Brian Robinson
Up in the heavens 2015 (detail)
Jonas Ropponen
Fade to Black, There is a Light 2016
69
70
Heather Shimmen
The Selfless Chair Dancer 2016
Andrew Southall
Self portrait No. 167 2016
71
72
Colin Stevens
Still Life With Small Constructions 2015
TextaQueen
Roots 2016
73
74
Tricky Walsh
The Thin Green Baize 2015
Zilverster (Sharon Goodwin and Irene Hanenbergh)
Taal (The Philippines) 2015 (detail)
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THE ARTISTS
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BELINDA ALLEN
TONY AMENEIRO
RAYMOND ARNOLD
b.1956, United Kingdom; arrived Australia, 1968 Lives and works in Sydney
b. 1959, United Kingdom; arrived Australia, 1968 Lives and works in Mittagong
b. 1950, Melbourne Lives and works in Queenstown
The Timeless Land/ Wentworth 2014 pigment prints on vintage book pages, mounted on art paper 130.0 x 90.0 cm (sheet)
Heads over Heads 2016
Etching Ghost/Ghost Mountain Acacia 2016
drypoints (white ink) 113.0 x 160.0 cm (sheet)
digital print 106.0 x 190.0 cm (sheet)
Named after a 1941 novel by Eleanor Dark, this work is a recent series of photoassemblages exploring the landscapes and history of Australia using historical books and texts as both lens and medium. It aims to raise awareness of the way that personal narratives, memories and assumptions about the settlement and exploitation of Australia might inform and distort our understanding of the Australian landscape.
This piece draws on a research project carried out at the J. L. Shellshear and J.T. Wilson museums at Sydney University, both teaching museums. Combined with images from the life-drawing studio, the exhibition based on this project explored issues around mortality and regeneration.
Contemporary photographs taken in locations relating to the literature are printed onto book pages from classic Australian stories. The intention is to provoke such questions as: How have these literary interpretations influen ed our perspectives on Australian landscape and culture? Is there the possibility of a response and connection to land beyond these cultural constraints?
Represented by Australian Galleries, Melbourne
Physicians, surgeons and students benefit from the generosity of donors who, in offering their bodies to the medical faculty, allow a new generation of lives to be saved.
I began work on the copper plates for this piece in the summer of 2011–12 at a camp in the mountains of Western Tasmania. The project has expanded through the various states of the intaglio and the digital in subsequent years. This landscape has been heavily impacted by a century of copper mining, trashed in fact, but there’s an optimism running as a backstory. This work is about a sort of wonder that nature can be so resilient. This is the story of botanical resistance! A contrast to environmental destruction. I’ve always wanted the print to play out as something active – this teetering between elements, between the positive and the negative. There’s an exchange going on, like a little reciprocating engine that keeps the work alive.
This work represents a eucalypt from the historic town of Wentworth, printed onto pages from a 1980 edition of Dark’s novel. 77
LYN ASHBY
GUNJAN AYLAWADI
ELIZABETH BANFIELD
b. 1953, United Kingdom; arrived Australia, 1960 Lives in Hurstbridge; works in Melbourne/Brisbane
b. 1986, India; arrived Australia, 2012 Lives and works in Sydney
b. 1963, United Kingdom; arrived Australia, 1966 Lives and works in Olinda
A Morning in May 2015
Geometric Zen Garden – Waterfall 2016
it’s not the same 2014
artist’s book 30.0 x 40.0 cm (sheet)
paper, glue 100.0 x 70.0 cm (sheet)
As an artist of the book, my practice explores the unique and inherent qualities found in that medium. Sometimes this involves an investigation into how the book form itself responds when posed with various philosophical questions, often involving the intersection of language, selfhood and the nature of being. Language has both a material–visual dimension and a coded mental aspect, making such investigations also an experiment in reading. This book is a paean to the wonders of both caffeine and the (typo)graphic mark on paper. A compounding series of text and typographic strings and image sequences thread through this 48-page work and together weave the story of an unusual experience one morning at breakfast. Is all this a once-in-a-lifetime revelation, or just a trance conjured by a wild ride through marks on paper?
Inspired by the zen gardens in Japan, this work invites the viewer to step in – both literally and metaphorically. By simultaneous use of multiple 2D and 3D shapes, generating an effect of depth, I aim to pull the viewer into a space that is free of symbolism, allowing contemplation of the moment one is in. Guided by the desire to slow down and extract meaning from the things I consume, my process is just as important as my intent. Made with thousands of paper strips that I cut and curl into paper ropes before gluing on to hand-drawn patterns, my process is time consuming, emotionally and physically demanding, yet meditative – the result of which is translated as meaning for anyone who pauses to engage with the work and find beauty in small details.
linocut, kozo tissue, thread 34.0 x 25.3 cm (sheet)
Black Cliff at Hallett Cove in South Australia is part of a signifi ant geological site that, despite its name, shows us in all its glorious lines and colours the story of our planet’s formation. For this piece, I have continued my study of Japanese tissue papers, especially their ability to facilitate layering in printmaking, translucency, pattern and colour mixing. The delicate and ephemeral nature of the paper contributes to my ongoing themes of the everchanging landscape, and our ever-changing memories of it and its associations. This particular landscape plays a signifi ant part in a very personal story, one that tells of the effects that time and ageing have upon grief. Ideas are substitutes for sorrows; the moment they change into ideas they lose a part of their power to hurt our hearts and, for a brief moment, the transformation even releases some joy. Marcel Proust Finding Time Again, 1927
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DEBORAH JUNE BEAUMONT
DAMIANO BERTOLI
SUE BEYER
b. 1963, Brisbane Lives and works in Toowoomba
b. 1969, Melbourne Lives and works in Melbourne
b. Brisbane 1969 Lives and works in Melbourne
Eightfold 2015
Adriana and Silvia 2015
DisLocation 2016
tabloid-format prints 41.0 x 58.0 cm (sheet)
pencil on paper (BFK Rives) 115.0 x 80.0 cm (sheet)
acrylic on yupo paper 185.0 x 75.0 cm (sheet)
Represented by Neon Parc, Melbourne
In 2016, after 155 years of production, Toowoomba’s newspaper printing presses completed their last print run. My spoilspaper (a tabloid-format artwork) was one of the last publications printed. The imagery originated from ‘spoils’: the inky, incidental and accidental prints that were created at the end of a newspaper print run during the press clean up. I have appropriated and re-produced these gestural yet mechanical pages by employing the materials and technologies of local newspaper printing. The Deleuzian fold is evident in these pages and the recto and verso are of equal importance – a fact often overlooked in papered works. This is a work that honors the materiality of tabloid-format newsprint: its unpretentious quality and capacity for multiplicity. These are works that beg to be owned and pages that beg to be turned.
Taken from the series ‘Associates’, this piece presents a pair of slogans from the 1970s Italian student and worker protest movement. The slogans are embedded within textile designs by the Memphis group, an industrial design collective from Milan that produced many objects and environments that defined postmodern design in the 1980s. Reproduced in a Memphis typeface, these texts represent a period of unrest in Italian culture that saw many artists and designers take a position against power structures and exploitation. The members of Memphis came from this background of social commentary and protest and as younger practitioners called their work radical, or anti-design. By the mid-1980s, Memphis design had become highly collectible and signifie the latest in status décor, despite the designers’ intentions to create a democratic and accessible populist design. The hand-drawn posters collapse this distance and return Memphis design to its beginnings as a critical form of expression.
My work primarily focuses on place and space. Like many landscape painters who attempt to capture, interpret and communicate the Genius Loci of place, I have always been fascinated by elements in the landscape that we detect subconsciously or sense intuitively and that we might ignore as irrational. In my work on paper I am investigating the idea of imagined landscapes and portals to other worlds. In contrast to these abstracted landscapes I use layers of town planning maps to represent order, restrictions and the boundaries that we impose on the natural topography.
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KATE BEYNON
DAMIAN BROOMHEAD
KATHRYN CAMM
b. 1970, Hong Kong; arrived Australia, 1974 Lives and works in Melbourne
b. 1964, Brisbane Lives and works in Sydney
b. 1991, Wagga Wagga Lives and works in Launceston
William Blake, Bennelong And The Tiger At The Tower Of London, 1793 2015
Untitled (on paper) 2015
Masked Ogre Dancers 2014–5 watercolour, gouache and pencil on cotton rag 77.0 x 56.0 cm (sheet)
oil pastel/oil stick 70.0 x 100.0 cm (sheet)
hand stitched embroidery on etching 38.5 x 20.5 cm
Represented by Sutton Gallery, Melbourne
My practice is interested in storytelling and ideas of flui and transcultural identities; metaphorically traversing ‘other’ worlds while creating positive talismanic imagery for living in precarious times. This work is inspired by a scene from An-Li: A Chinese Ghost Tale, a supernatural story set between an earthly world and an underwater realm. Against a pearlescent swirling backdrop, the ogre dancers leap and strike poses. The troupe of imagined creature-figu es includes a wild-haired ghoul, aquatic elf, blue shaman lady, pink lotus monkey, river-turtle-monster, fanged lion-dog and snake-eyed spirit. Adapted from theatrical, shamanist and ornamental masks, the dancers have transformed and become their masks. A signifi ant development in my recent work has been experimentation in watercolour and gouache – using a vibrant palette, metallic pigments and transparent washes.
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For several years I’ve been working on an open-ended series of drawings dealing with the early period of contact and colonisation from 1788 to 1795. I hope that my work represents the past and illuminates some of the early stories of fi st contact in an accessible and energetic way. By investigating the fascinating and often tragic interactions during early colonisation, I’d like to increase an understanding of our history, exploring dispossession and buried histories. In 1793, two indigenous voyagers, Bennelong and Yemmerrawannie, sailed with Governor Phillip to England. There they visited the Tower of London, where they saw the medieval armory, exotic animals – including a tiger – and possibly even William Blake, who sketched the tiger to illustrate his famous poem in that very same year. While only a slim chance exists that Bennelong and Blake came face-to-face, what we can say with certainty is that the tiger saw them both.
My practice is concerned greatly with materiality and repurposing old techniques in a contemporary way. I am interested in the idea of contour drawing and the way string and stitching directly relates to the idea of a continual line. The traditional technique of embroidery has many connections to women and domestic duties to do with the way we view women and their role within our society. By creating artworks depicting women in a non-conventional way, through the very traditional technique of embroidery, I aim to challenge the idea of what constitutes ‘women’s work’. We often think about women as either goddess or whore; my work hopes to incorporate the two.
SUSANNA CASTLEDEN
ANGELA CAVALIERI
NEILTON CLARKE
b. 1968, United Kingdom; arrived Australia, 1977 Lives and works in Fremantle
b. 1962, Melbourne Lives and works in Melbourne
b. 1958, Sydney Lives and works in Tokyo
1:1 Wing Tip CRJ 2015
Ragionando 2015
Loaded Beauty 2015
handprinted linocut and acrylic on paper 120.0 x 205.0 cm (sheet)
woodblock print 38.0 x 57.0 cm (sheet)
Growing out of my interest in music as storytelling, my exploration of Claudio Monteverdi’s madrigals and operas led me to examine his development of word painting and how his work with music, text and meaning could be adapted to the visual arts. A technique for writing musical forms that are a literal reflectio of the lyrics, the idea of word painting was used to create a new visual narrative from the music and lyrics of Monteverdi’s early baroque madrigals.
Living in Japan, I’m often reminded of the ‘other’ and spend plenty of time musing over how one fits in given shifts in setting, customs and language. Feeling suspended in a kind of no-man’s-land regarding communication, be it between my mother tongue English, the Japanese language or otherwise, is not uncommon.
gesso on paper maps 282.0 x 151.0 cm (sheet)
I made this work in a boneyard in Arizona – a desert used for storing and scrapping unused aircraft. Through accessing airplanes that are temporarily still, this body of ‘reverse-frottage’ works bear evidence of being in a location that runs counter to the usual fl w of mobility associated with air travel. I use the term reverse frottage to describe the mezzotint-like process that, through sanding and rubbing, allows a white image to emerge from a black surface, thus reversing the traditional frottage image. Through sanding by hand, the process records a physical encounter with a surface, leaving traces of not only that surface but also the weight, pace and action of my hand, and the desert environment in which the work was made. Made on unused maps of the Great Sandy Desert, it brings together two deserts as well as two redundant objects.
Ragionando (to reason with) is based on the lyrics of Monteverdi’s madrigal, Con che soavità. I want to create what I imagine the lyrics and music looks like. It is my interpretation of how I ‘see’ the song: ‘… to kiss the words and to speak the kisses’. I am depicting the moment of the two lips meeting and ‘reasoning’.
Wordplay has been a recurrent feature of my printmaking over the years. At times this is integral to the image, at times it is confined to peripherals, such as titles, and at times it’s exorcised altogether. This is a recent woodblock print, within which three letters from the Roman alphabet – Y, F and B – are situated in and around a log-ended ovoid form. All woods used in the work were sourced in Japan, the central shape printed from Japanese cedar (sugi 杉), other parts from various ply woods. All printing was done using a hand-held baren, without any presses.
81
RAY COFFEY
MATT COYLE
DAVID FAIRBAIRN
b. 1969, United Kingdom; arrived Australia, 2004 Lives and works in Brisbane
b. 1971, United Kingdom; arrived Australia, 1972 Lives and works in Hobart
b. 1949, Zambia; arrived Australia, 1981 Lives and works in Sydney
Samuel the Addict 2016
To the Death 2014
Portrait of J.L. No 2 2014
charcoal 88.0 x 150.0 cm (sheet)
felt-tip pen and coloured pencil on paper 42.0 x 60.0 cm (each sheet, diptych)
acrylic, gouache, monotype and charcoal on paper 76.0 x 56.0 cm (sheet)
Recently I have been making drawings depicting fightin figu es and they remind me of the drawings I made in my childhood of soldiers in battle. A big influen e, as a child, was seeing the samurai warriors portrayed in the television adaption of Shogun. The connection occurred to me while I was producing these new drawings and I am aware that I am still drawn to the same sort of imagery that fascinated me as a child. There is an intentional playfulness in the fightin scenes in these new drawings and indeed the models for these drawings were my daughters, who have modelled for me on countless occasions. Apart from the practical convenience of having eager models on hand, I have been interested in studying the mystery and intensity of young siblings ‘at play’, especially the rules they create around role-play and hence the imaginary world in which they enclose themselves.
The decision to work directly with a sitter is fundamental to my practice. For me, the traditional process of portraiture, the length of time spent with a person, the day-today stopping and starting of a work, as a series develops, are factors that contribute to the interpretation of the work.
Samuel is an addict. Samuel broke into our house and stole lots of valuable things. Samuel broke into nine other houses and stole lots of valuable things. Samuel was caught by the police who told us he would do anything to get drugs. Samuel was caught then released and reoffended, caught and released and reoffended, caught and released and reoffended, caught and released. Samuel is an addict and it will kill him soon but Samuel’s addiction doesn’t care.
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Represented by Stella Downer Fine Art, Sydney
I work predominately in black and white, without the added complexities of colour and mixed media that were a major feature in my drawings previously. In the new series I will be able to reinforce the underlying formal and abstract structures inherent in the depiction of the sitter, while still emphasising the emotional and psychological content.
YANNI FLOROS
DIANNE FOGWELL
DAVID FRAZER
b. 1981, Adelaide Lives and works in Adelaide
b. 1958, Lismore Lives and works in Canberra
b. 1966, Foster Lives and works in Castlemaine
A Cut Above 2015
Honour Guards 2016
The Text Message 2016
charcoal on paper 120.0 x 108.0 cm (sheet)
linocut 108.0 x 395.0 cm (sheet)
linocut 96.0 x 76.0 cm (sheet)
I think of the trees in this image as honour guards of my personal environment. Each tree is unique and striving to stand strong against the charge of urban development.
I have portrayed a butchered landscape that could be anywhere at anytime, except the focus of the communication is a modern smart phone. I’ll leave what’s on that text message to the imagination of the viewer.
Represented by Michael Reid, Sydney
In the animal kingdom as in the financial market, herds are mustered and then herds are slaughtered. The financial Wolf Market – characterised by tight trading, increased volatility and quick reversals – is a killing ground. Open to the fast, decisive and friendless trader who employs lupine hunting tactics to isolate and savage stock through short-selling. In this drawing, I have chosen to focus on the dark heart of the rogue financial trader. The elegantly masked trader on the cusp of the killer rush. The financial wolf, swathed in super-fine merino (literally sheep’s clothing). The ruthless trader that eats what it kills in the market. The slaughter of the financial herd for personal gain. I hope to showcase an observant and caustic reading of the animal instinct behind human behaviour.
Contemplation and observation on planted trees in our environment was the muse for this piece, drawing on the idea of the ‘honour avenue’ i.e. the planting of trees as a dedication to individual service men and women who gave their lives in service to their country in times of war. The practice originated in 1917 in Ballarat, Victoria. We also plant trees in our urban spaces as guardians for the living in the war for the environment. They are there: combating climate change, cleaning the air, providing oxygen, saving water, preventing soil erosion. They provide food and habitat for wildlife, warmth, privacy and shelter, and unify the landscape. They are vigorous, weathered but dependable and beautiful. They are the living soldiers for the environment.
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SAM GOLDING
JACKIE GORRING
GRACIA HABY
b. 1964, Melbourne Lives and works in Melbourne
b. 1953, Maitland Lives and works in Allendale
b. 1975, Melbourne
Rosie the Riveter (after Arcimboldo) 2014
Brickaway 2016
ink and paper on paper 84.0 x 58.0 cm (sheet)
relief print from styrofoam 58.0 x 109.0 cm (variable)
After Julia Gillard’s misogyny speech in Parliament, I created the Rosie image from 21st century women, found in 21st century magazines. These are modern women united in the form of Rosie. It clearly harks back to Rosie as an icon, and reflects the currency of the message of enabling women.
My work is concerned with human clichés, which to be fair are often truisms that highlight aspects of the human condition, and it is this that attracts my interest. I like the pungent, the humorous and the ironic. In this work the cliché that I am taking an interest in is me. I am stepping outside myself to observe and laugh at my sometimes puzzling activities. In this case, toiling over some brick paving in my own inimitable style. It is meant to be a joyous portrayal of an activity that after the seven-thousandth brick could become mundane if I didn’t sporadically incorporate bottles, crockery, figurines etc. Hence, my print reflects my bricklaying style, being cutouts of images rearranged to suit my fancy.
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b. 1976, Melbourne Live and work in Melbourne Because I Like You 2016 artist’s book, woodblock engraving, unique state collage with pencil and paint additions 21.5 x 26.0 x 3.5 cm
Represented by Insect Art Management
Rosie the Riveter is a mid-20th century feminist icon. It is reprised using a mode derived from Arcimboldo, a Florentine court painter of around the 1560s and of Rauschenberg, from the United States in the 1950s.
LOUISE JENNISON
This work is a love letter to ten mammals. Each edition is housed in a black fabric Solander box. Each spread has one lemonwood block print portrait and one original collage of the mammal mirrored. The mammals featured range from a greater bilby (Macrotis lagotis) to a sea otter (Enhydra lutris) by way of a royal antelope (Neotragus pygmaeus) and a gruff polar bear (Ursus maritimus). This edition has been over a year in the making, based on a back and forth notion we have been toying with more and more (a collage in response to a print, this time). The printed portrait shows nature as intended (close to), and the collage shows the animal in different (and often less than ideal) surroundings. It is also our fi st book to feature woodblock prints.
MARIE HAGERTY
ROBERT HAGUE
REW HANKS
b. 1964, Sydney Works in Canberra
b. 1967, New Zealand; arrived Australia, 1985 Lives and works in Melbourne
b. 1958, Sydney Lives and works in Sydney
Natives on the River (after Glover) 2016
linoprint 80.0 x 120.0 cm (sheet)
Wasp 2015 collage 152.0 x 112.0 cm (overall, diptych) Represented by Karen Woodbury Gallery, Melbourne
hand painted lithograph on cotton rag paper 76.0 x 100.0 cm (sheet)
A Touch of Home 2015
Represented by Nicholas Thompson, Melbourne
Represented by Fehily Contemporary, Melbourne
My practice incorporates an ongoing celebration of collage and the ways in which abstraction meets with figu ation when shapes and forms are overlapped, cut away, defined or interconnected. The manipulation of colour, form, light and shadow renders the subject an illusion – a suggestion that what meets the eye may be ambiguous or illogical when pared down to its essential shapes. The combination of hard edges and soft arcs unfurl in fleetin figu ations, yet remain wholly abstract shapes. This work explores the theme of the ‘plane girl’, referencing the plight of a group of Soviet female ‘Night Witches’ who fl w nighttime combat bombing missions during World War Two. My collages fuse the female with the machine, creating a hybrid and surreal image. The dynamic shapes and lines emphasise speed and technology – the human form morphing into a streamlined aeroplane.
The sculpture Vault (aka ‘Yellow Peril’, Ron Robertson-Swann, 1980) stands foreign and timeless in a Glover landscape (John Glover, 1838). In the foreground a dying Burke and Wills (John Longstaff, 1907) stare helplessly out. The fate of the Braylwunyer people of the Ouse River country – so lovingly rendered by Glover – the hopes of a modernist and of a colonial explorer are woven together in a confusing and cautionary tale: a decorative plate, a broken dream and Glover’s noble paradise torn apart by ambition.
Rew Hanks is a Sydney-based printmaker who produces witty and engaging large-scale linocuts. He gathers his imagery like a bowerbird, collating historical, environmental and popular culture issues, such as the conflict between introduced and native species and the cloning of the Tasmanian tiger and its possible reintroduction into the Australian landscape. His post-modernist fables use irony and satire to tackle the issues of the maltreatment of Indigenous people and Australia’s legacy of colonialism. In his recent series of linoprints ‘Cook’s Conquest’ he has documented the historical narrative of how sport has become entrenched in the Australian ethos. This piece documents the thoughtless introduction of rabbits to Australia so wealthy squatters could continue to indulge in the sport of hunting. The reinterpretation of colonial narratives highlights the destructive legacy on the Australian contemporary environment and the $500 million per annum loss to 85 primary production.
KATHERINE HATTAM
MARK HILTON
MARK HISLOP
b. 1950, Melbourne Lives and works in Melbourne
b. 1977, Melbourne Lives and works in Melbourne
b. 1962, Cooma Lives and works in Melbourne
Thinking About William Buckley 2016
Half Flush (Spades) 2016
The Book That Jack Ate 2016
paper and resin 123.0 x 150.0 x 5.7 cm
graphite on paper 77.0 x 60.0 cm (sheet)
Represented by Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney
Represented by Wagner Contemporary, Sydney
Each playing card in this sculptural work adopts a duality that can’t help but stir something in the viewer. With the imagery originating as graphite on paper, Hilton employs a range of styles, from highly intricate realism to cartoons and simple line sketches. Using the standard pack of cards as his organising principle, Hilton mixes desire, degradation, contamination, zealotry and violence into a brew often sweetened by humour. Each suit has a theme that works more as a starting point than a defining rule: diamonds are class, hearts are religion, clubs are the environment, spades are nationalism. Sculpturally, the cards begin to reflect and refract, stuck in sticky conversations from which society tends to shirk.
This work is one of a series of drawings of books my dog has eaten. Resulting from incidents that occur frequently at home, my dog Jack’s appetite for chewing books reflects my late night browsing and reading habits. The book depicted – Documenta X: the book – is the companion publication to the exhibition Documenta X, 1997, part of a series of exhibitions that take place in Kassel, Germany, every fi e years. The book documents and analyses the cultural development of the western world from 1945 to 1997. The drawing contends that these contemporary western values are a contested arena of competing beliefs, ideologies and values that can result in, and stem from, violent actions and destructive tendencies.
charcoal on paper 200.0 x 148.0 cm (sheet) Represented by Diane Singer, Melbourne
The extraordinary story of escaped convict William Buckley living for thirty-two years along the Victorian coast is well known. Starting from Sullivan’s Cove (now Sorrento), he makes his way, living in caves at Point Lonsdale and in huts, trapping eels and bream at Breamlea. For various reasons he is accepted by and lives with the Wathaurong tribe, to the extent that he loses his grasp of English. He lives with various Indigenous women, probably having a daughter with one. He is found, pardoned, and returns to society where he marries a white woman. Knowing this coast over decades, the story resonates with me. In the pictures depicting this mythic story Buckley is presented solo as the giant white man wearing possum skins – the universal male dominating. Where are the women? The Wathaurong? Without being at all didactic, but acknowledging the gender and cultural subtexts, I wanted to think about and draw the story differently. 86
JUDY HOLDING
BEN HOLGATE
JAKE HOLMES
b. 1954, Bendigo Lives and works in Melbourne
b. 1961, United Kingdom; arrived Australia, 1996 Lives and works in Melbourne
b. 1988, United Kingdom; arrived Australia, 1997 Lives and works in Adelaide
The Bombing of Darwin 2015
Kilburn 1 2015
pen and ink on watercolour paper 56.0 x 228.0 cm (sheet)
31 layer screenprint on paper 65.0 x 45.0 cm (sheet)
My large-scale drawings attempt to explore aspects of the way the brain works. My practice is underpinned by the latest research in neuroscience and in particular the profound inefficiency of the conscious mind in usefully applying stored and transitory information.
The Kilburn series is an attempt to document, using techniques of photograph, collage and print, the ongoing changes occurring where I live and to recall my personal story of migration as a child. Though the images are deeply personal, these removed and re-combined objects and spaces create a visual language that may be familiar to many and act as a patchwork of Australia’s inner suburbia.
Diary 1 2015 artist’s book, linoprint, watercolour, silkscreen 20.0 x 20.0 x 30.0 cm Represented by Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne
My work is concentrated on the Australian landscape and its unresolved and layered history. Over many years of field ork in the Northern Territory and Goldfields of Victoria I have developed a language of personal symbols that I use across the mediums of sculpture, watercolour and printmaking. This work can be seen as an amalgamation of all these concerns in the form of a paper sculpture.
Starting with a core political, social, historical or autobiographical theme, I let any thoughts that arise as I draw enter the piece in as unfil ered a way as I can. A simple drawing style suits this well and the works become a playful, observational tableaux with memories, current concerns, dreams, neuroses and almost subconscious ideas all intertwined. So in a sense they are intimate ‘thought portraits’. However, as they are replete with humour, character, culture and shared iconography they are very accessible to the viewer, so they also succeed in bridging the isolation between individuals that is common to human experience.
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EAMONN JACKSON
CLAUDE JONES
DEBORAH KELLY
b. 1992, Melbourne Lives and works in Melbourne
b. 1967, New Zealand; arrived Australia, 1987 Lives and works in Sydney
b. 1962, Melbourne Lives and works in Sydney
Hare-Brain 2016
stop motion animated paper collage 3 minutes 56 seconds (single channel cinema edit)
Shadowland 2015 graphite 66.0 x 66.0 cm (sheet)
acrylic, watercolour, pencil, collage on paper 92.0 x 143.5 cm (sheet)
Lying Women 2016
Represented by Artereal, Sydney
Recreating my perspective at a single moment in time to take the viewer, like Alice, down the rabbit hole.
My art focuses on the creation of chimeric, mutant and anthropomorphised forms that examine our complex and contradictory relationships with other animals. I am interested in exploring how our taxonomic categorisations of species determines how we treat them and how this system is marred by inconsistencies. This piece highlights one such inconsistency in which rabbits are perceived as both cuddly companion animals but also as meat and fur ‘products’. While we support an industry that raises millions of companion animals such as rabbits, we also trap, torture and kill billions of animals annually. My work seeks to expose such contradictions in the face of the widespread, culturally ingrained acceptance of this schism. I employ soft colours and decorative elements that belie the sinister narrative content of the work in the same way that the sordid underbelly of ‘legitimate’ mistreatment and exploitation of animals is repressed and sugar-coated.
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The slow demise and haunted afterlife of printed reference material is my major current preoccupation. As a high school student in 1970s Melbourne, my primary exposure to art was through the pages of books. I studied the European canon at a triple remove: as a girl, as an antipodean girl, and as an antipodean girl who only saw the paintings through cheap approximations of European glory on printed paper. I collect discarded art encyclopedias from garage sales, charity shops and the side of the road. The papery pictures are purveyors of sharply delimited roles for women, compulsory heterosexuality, and of a hierarchy of human creative potential of which painting is the apex. The work imagines canonical reclining nudes escaping from centuries of servitude to that version of reality, and proposes a great gathering of female energy, a revolution, a massing of delighted and determined collective will to form another future.
GLADDY KEMARRE
PAULETTA KERINAUIA
MARTIN KING
b. c. 1950, Utopia Lives and works in Utopia
b. 1982, Darwin Lives and works on Melville Island
b. 1957, Melbourne Lives and works in Melbourne
Kulama 2016
graphite on drafting film watercolour on paper 180.0 x 150.0 cm (sheet)
Awelye 2015 acrylic on paper 78.0 x 57.0 cm (each, four pieces) Represented by Mossenson Galleries, Perth
Gladdy Kemarre was born around 1950 at Mount Swan in her father’s country. The daughter of Clara Kngwarreye and Kwementyay Pwerle, she was brought up in the Harts Range region with her sister Ally Kemarre and her brother Billy Benn Perrurle. The three siblings grew up learning the traditions of their Anmatyerre people and learning to paint through the ceremonial body designs. Their father was a carver of traditional objects, boomerangs and spears.
ochres on paper 76.0 x 106.0 cm (sheet)
Imperfectly Known 2016
Represented by Jilamara Arts and Crafts, Winnellie
Represented by Gallery Smith, Melbourne
The Kulama ceremony is performed in the late wet season in Australia (March–April) when a ring appears around the moon. Kulama is a traditional initiation for young men that coincides with the harvest of a certain wild yam species. Elders of both sexes sing and dance for three days, welcoming the boys into adulthood. The boy is then renamed with his true man’s name.
This is a work about the interaction and interrelationship between humans and animals, and nature and culture, that has existed for centuries within the practice of falconry. It is a metaphor of the struggle for control over nature, the imprecise and empirical endeavours to harness the wildness.
This series captures the essence of Awelye – women’s ritual and body designs. Awelye body painting designs are applied onto the upper female body for ceremonies. Kemarre transfers the formal elements of these designs: line and the three colours – red, white and yellow – onto paper. The movement of these dancing bodies is created through the fl w of the line over the coloured surface.
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HEATHER KOOWOOTHA
JOHN LOANE
GLEN MACKIE (KEI KALAK)
(JUNGARRA)
b. 1950, Melbourne Lives and works in Canberra
b. 1975, Yam Island Lives and works in Cairns
SANGEETA SANDRASEGAR
Kek 2015
b. 1977, Brisbane Lives and works in Melbourne
vinylcut 114.0 x 70.0 cm (sheet)
b. 1966, Cairns Lives and works in Cairns The Landlady 2015 drypoint on perspex, printed, royal blue 76.0 x 60.0 cm (sheet) Represented by Canopy Art Centre, Cairns
I drew this because I wanted to have a little bit of fun, as most of my works are very sad, and to show people through my work that you can have jokes as well. I don’t want to see people in the gallery being sad and walking out with these worries in their mind. In this piece I’ve drawn the Queen of England because she’s always walking around serious. She has two koalas instead of her two corgis. There are early settlers and in the sky all the ancestors from Australia are looking down on them. Mostly I love to do a lot of details. I don’t leave anything blank – I’m that sort of artist. Printmaking makes me feel that I’ve achieved something, explaining all my stories. I’ve got everything all bottled up in my head and now it’s all coming out.
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And though greatly he failed, more greatly he dared 2016
Represented by Canopy Art Centre, Cairns
etching and aquatine on lana 300 gsm, paper cutout 86.0 x 116.0 cm (sheet) Sangeeta is represented by Murray White Room, Melbourne
This collaboration of printmaking and cutout depicts the fall of Phaeton who queried his divine heritage, and unsuccessfully steered his father’s (the sungod) chariot through the skies, nearly burning up the earth before being shot down by Jupiter. This dictum upon pride and hope addresses human agency and our contemporary challenges of environmental understanding and global warming. As Plato wrote: There have been, and will be again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes; the greatest have been brought about by the agencies of fire and water, and other lesser ones by innumerable other causes. The allegorical symbols of fi e and water are synonymous with the methods of printmaking, while the shadows formed by the cutout reflect upon the doubleness of the collaborative project and human endeavor in all its manifestations.
Kek is the Zenadh Kes word for April Star. Kek is also the name of the annual celebration for the end of the monsoon season and the Torres Straight Island cycle of the new year and the most festive time in the old days. Much fuss and effort was made in preparations for the ceremony, which lasted a whole moon cycle. From York Island, Yam (Iama), Darnley (Erub) and Nagir, great sea-going canoes of families would travel to Mer, easternmost of all the islands, with dugong, yams, seed-mash and coconuts. Ceremonial objects and weavings were also featured. I have illustrated a sea turtle, food for the ceremony, and an image of the Zogo Le (holy man) who made the journey from each island to lead in song and ceremony. My ancestors believed that our celebrations brought on the new crops and game – and not the other way around.
LILY MAE MARTIN
PENNY MASON
ROY MCIVOR
b. 1983, Melbourne Lives and works in Ballarat
b. 1950, Hobart Lives and works in Launceston
b. 1934, Cape Bedford Mission Lives and works in Queensland
Wrestling three 2015
Between Waves and Tides – Tasmanian Coastline # 2 2016
The Removal 2015
ink on paper 105.0 x 75.0 cm (sheet) Represented by Scott Livesey Galleries, Melbourne
As an artist, I have always been interested in exploring representations of femininity, femaleness and the female body in my work. One of the primary preoccupations of my work to date has been the internal world of women as communicated by the body. This is, in part, a response to contemporary representations of femaleness: the female body is ubiquitous, presented visually everywhere, in contexts that range from the crassly commercial to the sacred and divine – and yet these representations, to me, have always felt devoid of the female experience as I know and understand it.
watercolour, ink, pastel and pencil on paper 6 units at 34.0 cm diameter each
I have a continuing interest in parallels between the material processes that govern image evolution and forces that shape the physical environment. My work imagines the movement, energy, turbulence and ephemeral nature of phenomena as they emerge and subside across minute and vast timeframes to evoke the mysterious flux of space, time and matter. These themes are evident in my exploitation of the alluvial qualities of watercolour. I become absorbed by the interplay of random elements and physical forces and utilise the characteristic instability of pigment suspended in water to generate images that suggest landscape features and detail. This work refers to several overlapping themes: reveries based on specific experiences of Tasmanian locations as well as musings about phenomena that affect the processes of regeneration, renewal, stasis, decay and erosion.
etching on zinc plate 62.0 x 80.0 cm Represented by Canopy Art Centre, Cairns
During World War Two, when I was ten years old, my entire Guugu Yimithirr community of Hope Vale (then called Cape Bedford Mission), near Cooktown in far north Queensland, was rounded up by armed military police and forcibly transported south, near Longreach. Government suspicions about the loyalties of our German Lutheran mission prompted allegations of a possible invasion, supported by us, thinking we would use our bush expertise to lead the Japanese soldiers through unchartered territory. Of course, we were unaware of the politics. Army trucks arrived one day in May 1942 and our community of 285 people was forced onto a steamboat without any food, water or warm clothing, then by train to Woorabinda Aboriginal Reserve west of Rockhampton, a distance of 1500 kilometres. It was very cold at night sleeping on the floo . As a result of this trauma nearly one-quarter of our people died, including my sister Emily. Seven years later we were allowed to return to Hope Vale.
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FIONA MCMONAGLE
JENNIFER MILLS
GLENN MORGAN
b. 1977, Ireland; arrived Australia, 1977 Lives and works in Melbourne
b. 1966, Bendigo Lives and works in Melbourne
b. 1955, Warrnambool Lives and works in Warrnambool
In the echo chamber (1982 ‘Colours Fly Away’ on Countdown 9,975 Views) 2016
Self Portrait in Shed 2016
watercolour, gouache, ink, pencil on paper 82.0 x 110.0 cm (sheet)
Represented by Australian Galleries, Melbourne
Wonky 2014 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper 182.0 x 57.0 cm (sheet) Represented by Olsen Irwin, Sydney
pen and ink 59.4 x 84.1 cm (sheet)
Represented by Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney
The 2012 London Olympics saw women’s boxing final y accepted as an Olympic sport – a monumental recognition for the many women involved in the long history of this competitive sport. I discovered boxing ten years ago. The training a boxer undertakes is focused and rigorous – the preparation to step inside the ring and take up the fight demands both mental and physical prowess, self-discipline and dedication. A boxer trains in order to be fearless, and I am fascinated by the courage of such professional sportswomen. My art deals with the familiar of our suburban lives. I believe that where you spend your adolescent years will mark you as a person, and as an artist I am exploring the transitions between the known and perceived. Through my boxing training I discern the affinity with my art making: the perseverance of practice, the perfection of style, the fl w and run of the painting like the movement in the ring. 92
This is the point where myself then and myself now confuse themselves into one. I know I have added to this Memory every time I have thought about it, or brought it out to look at it … It has got further away and brighter, more and ‘less’ real. A.S. Byatt
This work is part of an ongoing study of my identity through drawing. There are certain points in my personal history that draw me backwards and reverberate into the present. Whether I look at myself as a child in a school photograph, or in this instance, at someone else in her school photograph. I connect with the person I was then, and the one I am now. In this work the reverberating memory is that of attending the filming of Countdown in 1982. English New Wave band The Teardrop Explodes performed their song Colours Fly Away. I have re-watched this event on YouTube and searched for myself in the audience with no success.
My work is always telling a story. I drew this work while I was at hospital looking after my sick father. I think this image is about how much I was missing my shed. Dad had been very unwell, and I was away at the Geelong Hospital for four weeks, unable to work so I brought in a piece of paper and some inks and away I went. This image just came out.
JOANNE MORRIS
ANDY MULLENS
PETER MUNGKURI
b. 1974, Melbourne Lives and works in Melbourne
b. 1991, Canberra Lives and works in Canberra
b. 1946, Mimili Community Lives and works in Alice Springs
Les Twentyman 2014
Exchange 2015
Ngura (Country) 2016
charcoal 147.0 x 105.0 cm (sheet)
pre-war currency from Vietnam, cotton on thread 6.8 x 57.0 cm (each)
Indian ink and tea on Hahnemüle paper 78.0 x 107.0 cm (sheet) Represented by Iwantja Arts, Alice Springs
My work aims to capture the individualities of people across the world as a way to explore different cultures and expressions. My art does not discriminate. It accepts and explores the beauty in every human being, ignoring social and racial prejudices in the process. This work on paper was based on a photograph. The concept was to go beyond that image and to bring the subject alive with texture and soul. I use my emotional response to enhance the images I work with, breathing new life into the subjects creating a heightened and much more complex perception of the subject. I have developed my own original technique of blending charcoal and graphite pencils with various handcrafted brushes to give a photorealistic look to my drawings. I use this monochromatic medium to focus the viewers’ attention to the drama of light, shadow and texture without the added influen e of colour.
My art practice is an ongoing investigation of cultural identity. I use my own heritage as a Vietnamese-Australian as a case study in my works, exploring a shifting notion of what it means to negotiate dual cultural identity. Through my art I reconcile with my Vietnamese heritage – reconnecting with a home that no longer exists in the way my mother knew it. In this work, I use currency from pre-war Vietnam that belonged to my mother. In red thread I overlay the pre-war Vietnamese flag: three horizontal bands. The thread extends beyond the edges in uneven lengths. The punctuation of the sewing needle perforates the delicate surface almost to the point of decay. Contrasting materials and colours are striking almost to the point of aggression, but a closer inspection reveals the fragility of the work. This piece presents a tension reflecti e of my feelings as both an outsider and owner of Vietnamese history.
Culminating from an expansive lifetime living intrinsically with nature and working in the deserts of the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands, Peter’s respect and reverence for his environment is explicitly, nostalgically, and occasionally romantically expressed within his paintings. Loaded with an energy and free-fl wing movement, Peter’s works on paper quietly shimmer. The repetitious depiction of sweeping paths link loosely together, connecting a myriad of softly dotted rock holes as concentric rings. The work evokes a landscape enigmatic with hidden waterholes, the interlocking rolls of a mountain range suggestive of the waves of a sand-swept desert. Often bordering his paintings and drawings with the structured symbolism of branches or pathways, Peter creates a vantage point or viewing ledge, allowing the illusion of peering into the painting.
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JANICE MURRAY
BECC ORSZÀG
DANIEL O’SHANE
b. 1966, Melville Island Lives and works in Milikapiti
b. 1986, Melbourne Lives and works in Melbourne
b. 1990, Cairns Lives and works in Cairns
Jilamara 2015
The Source of All Things (Birth of The Rivers) 2016
Aib Ene Zogo ni Pat (Story of Aib and the sacred waterhole) 2015
graphite pencil and 24-carat gold leaf on watercolour paper 76.0 x 105.0 cm (sheet)
vinylcut, handcoloured, handwiped (watercolour) 120.0 x 220.0 cm
ochres on paper 106.0 x 76.0 cm (sheet) Represented by Jilamara Arts and Crafts, Winnellie
Represented by Canopy Art Centre, Cairns
All jilamara (designs) are originally drawn from the body painting that accompanied the pukumani (funeral) and kulama (initiation/yam) ceremonies. An individual design and aesthetic is highly valued by Tiwi artists and is representative of their personal interpretation of the traditional Tiwi design or jilamara.
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The referencing of photographic images from archives and books provides a vital element of history and truth, highlighting the fallibility and malleability of our memories and how easily our perceived realities can be rewritten. This work is part of the series of drawings – Immaculate Landscapes – which are meditations on the sublime. Depicting worlds within worlds, this dreamscape contains elements of symmetry reminiscent of a Rorschach image inviting the viewer to enter a state of self-reflection It portrays a metaphysical landscape inspired by the collective longing for a sacred place beyond our physical world, such as a utopia. The minute and carefully considered detail is an ultimate submission to the impossibility of perfection, with slight imperfections and incongruities in symmetry reminding us of man’s humble limitations.
Meuram hunters found an unusually huge izerr (bailer shell) on Kerged Quay and fil ed it with water and paddled hard for hours. Thirsty, they drank from the izerr and to their surprise the water remained at the same level regardless of how much they drank. This was a magic izerr (zogo ni). Travelling further west, they arrived at their ged nor (home reef). Approaching Keirari from the east, they could see their people lining the shore to welcome them back. The zogo ni was hung up at night from a wongi tree where it could be seen by the hunters. But it was stolen by Aib, who dropped water from it as he ran, forming small waterholes. Pursued, Aib was eventually found, speared and killed, his body bursting with the sacred water. In this very spot there now exists the largest of three natural springs on Darnley Island in the Torres Straits.
JIM PAVLIDIS
JOSIE KUNOTH PETYARRE
TOM POLO
b. 1964, Melbourne Lives and works in Melbourne
b. 1959, Utopia Lives and works in Utopia
b. 1985, Sydney Lives and works in Sydney
Relic 2015
Sugar Bag 2015
stone lithograph 70.0 x 100.0 cm (sheet)
acrylic on paper 77.0 x 58.0 cm (sheet)
Judgemental Earring/Out Of The Shadows, Into The Light 2015
Represented by Langford 120, Melbourne
Represented by Mossenson Galleries, Perth
acrylic and vinyl acrylic on Saunders Waterford 638 gsm 76.0 x 56.0 cm (2 parts, each) Represented by STATION, Melbourne
This work is a recent lithograph from an ongoing series that began twenty years ago. In the 1990s I was drawn to the uncompromising industrial landscapes of Melbourne as they evoked a sense of strength and timelessness. Two decades later these same vistas have become symbols of unsustainability. The old American car, while remaining an object of desire for collectors, is a perfect metaphor for a time and mindset that we now understand can’t continue without awful consequences. A feature of the lithographic wash employed in my print is that it dries in a coarse and unpredictable way, making the imposing shape of the car appear fragile.
In her latest body of paintings, Anmatyerre artist Josie Kunoth Petyarre has devoted herself entirely to the depiction of the sugar bag. According to Petyarre, these paintings contain ‘all the sweetness of the bush’ – not just the sugar bags themselves, but also the colourful bush grevillea and corkwood fl wers that produce the honey, the changing colours of the season, and the travel of the bees across the landscape. In Petyarre’s case, this is the landscape of her father’s Alhalkere country of Utopia in the eastern desert, to which the sugar bag Dreaming is associated.
Tom Polo’s practice employs painting and installation to explore what he refers to as a ‘corrosive anxiety of the human condition’. Through text and figu ation Polo’s paintings investigate how doubt, gesture, tension and desire are embodied within extended acts of portraiture. The figu es and caricatures that arise in his work, drawn from acute observations and encounters, pictorialise the performative relationships between himself and an audience as well as the role of personas – the artist’s own and imaginary – in mediating a reading of social space. In two parts, this work is an emphasis on looking and being looked at. Contrasted both in colour and mood, the work highlights the tensions of interpersonal relationships while suggesting ideas of visibility and desire.
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PETER ROBERTSON
BRIAN ROBINSON
JONAS ROPPONEN
b. 1959, Hamilton Lives and works in Melbourne
b. 1973, Thursday Island Lives and works in Cairns
Untitled 7 from the series The Drifters 2016
Up in the heavens 2015
b. 1977, Sweden; arrived Australia, 1983 Lives and works in Melbourne
graphite on paper 36.0 x 48.0 cm (sheet)
The drawings in this series are the result of an immersive project whereby I filmed real subjects in action on drifting trikes, late at night, in a multistorey car park in the Melbourne CBD. I then edited the film, frame by frame, and selected numerous stills from which the fina images are drawn. These subjects of youth recall and continue my interest in urban sub-cultures.
linocut 76.0 x 120.0 cm (sheet) Represented by Mossenson Galleries, Perth
linocut 76.0 cm x 63.5 cm (sheet)
This work pays homage to the great renaissance masters of the 14th through to the 17th centuries. A young Robinson would accompany his mother and grandfather to Mass on Sundays. He was unenthusiastic about this weekly ritual, until he noticed the classically inspired artwork in the church. Once his curiosity and imagination had been sparked Robinson happily accompanied his family and would sit and study the paintings, icons and sculptures.
Jonas Ropponen often uses found timber offcuts, discarded consumer materials, bodily fluids and incidental markmaking in his prints. Text is also often used in his work in a similar manner – discarded thoughts, deep memories, snippets of family dynamics are recomposed in random alignments.
Pursuing this interest in classical Western art, Robinson began to study the works of the Old Masters, using the centuries-old technique of copying their works in an effort to understand and master their creative processes. Robinson now also extends this method to include study of the symbolic and thematic concerns of the Masters – combining classical and universally recognised themes with the symbology, patterning and stories specifi to Zenadh Kes Islanders and their culture. 96
Fade to Black, There is a Light 2016
In this work are two short written pieces addressed to a long-time estranged mother in a cult. These are surrounded by stream of consciousness text carved into the lino block while navigating the cognitive challenges of reversing text in order for it to read right to left when printed. The intense focus on carving was used as a conduit for the subconscious to manifest. Emotional currents resulting from family estrangement, religious indoctrination and its ramifi ations, embarrassing confessions, a slightly gothic contemplation of death and private worries are made public in this print.
HEATHER SHIMMEN
ANDREW SOUTHALL
COLIN STEVENS
b. 1957, Melbourne Lives and works in Venus Bay, Melbourne
b. 1948, Melbourne Lives and works in Melbourne
b. 1948, Melbourne Lives and works in Chelsea
The Selfless Chair Dancer 2016
Self Portrait No. 167 2016 pencil on paper 76.0 x 55.0 cm
Still Life With Small Constructions 2015
linocut on paper with ink and organza 191.0 x 154.0 cm (sheet)
Represented by Langford 120, Melbourne
gouache 82.0 x 58.0 cm
Self-portrait No. 167 is the latest of an on-going series (project) I began in 2012 after reading a statement by David Hockney: ‘you’re not a real artist until you draw self-portraits.’ This may be a dubious statement but I took it to heart. Also, I had to learn how to draw in the realistic manner I wanted to proceed in. My wish now at sixty-nine is to continue to document my advancing years without subtractions or stylistic embellishments.
I have long been interested in the concept of permanence and impermanence. Much of my work is based on assembled tableaux that I construct to serve as models for my paintings. These are often tower structures. From Nimrod to the Grollo brothers, aspirations go far beyond mere function. My smaller paintings are usually of pseudo-fetishistic constructs. These are concerned with challenging belief systems.
Represented by Australian Galleries, Melbourne
This work is made up of multiple panels combining linocut underlined in calligraphic spidery movements in ink. The fractured treatment is a reflection of the elements of a multiple narrative, both personal and historical, with the inclusion of a micro social statement. In this work, like many, the female takes a central role and is part of my long running ‘Matilda Waltzing’ project. I strive to make these females appear as imbued with strength and power and a touch of introspection. As with a shape shifter my ‘Matilda’s’ alter their form and visage but in essence they remain constant. This dancer is an all-singing, alldancing female who is moved by the forces of her time – both ancient and colonial, timeless and cruel. These resonate in our contemporary world.
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TEXTAQUEEN
TRICKY WALSH
ZILVERSTER (GOODWIN
b. 1975, Perth Lives and works in Melbourne
b. 1974, Moe Lives and works in Hobart
AND HANENBERGH)
Roots 2016
The Thin Green Baize 2015
fib e-tip pens and watercolour on cotton paper 127.0 x 97.0 cm (sheet)
gouache and watercolour on paper 152.0 x 112.0 cm (sheet)
Represented by Sullivan + Strumpf, Sydney
Represented by MARS Gallery, Melbourne
Est. 2010, Melbourne Live and work in Melbourne Taal (The Philippines) 2015 ink on stonehenge archival paper 56.0 x 76.3 cm (sheet) Represented by Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne
My practice imagines an everexpanding created universe representative of the psychic survival process of a person of colour among cultural and colonial legacies. Increasingly focused on my own identity as an Australian-born Indian, I use the image of myself as a conduit for articulating broader experiences of racism, exoticism, and expectations of cultural authenticity. Imagery associated with my ancestral lands in India interacts with emblems of white-centric Australia or fuses with the indigenous flo a of the lands on which I create to become ‘hybrid landscapes’, becoming allegorical representations of diasporic identity. Recurring motifs include Chico chocolate gummy babies found in Australian supermarkets representing my ancestors and I, interchangeably; dairy milk as a metaphor for whiteness; elephant trunks alluding to my ancestral memories; and coconuts as powerfully ambiguous references to my heritage and as pejorative symbols of internalised racism.
I live in Tasmania where, for better or worse, the concepts of art and gambling have become intertwined. The unforgiving nature of watercolour and paper relies on a certain calculated recklessness and a pinch of blind faith, or at least a willingness to make the most out of what you end up with. Green baize was used as the dividing curtain between privilege and a lack thereof. Historically, it was used in houses for the forming of curtains or screens that would insulate landowners and gentlefolk from their servants. Now, of course, it can be found liberally scattered across gambling tables worldwide, housing a different kind of servitude. Luck is an interesting concept. Both good and bad, it is always a game changer. Some people have none; some have all of it. Every time I move a paintbrush loaded with pigment across a clean white surface I believe in it, or at least, I hope for it. Sometimes it pays, sometimes I get halfway through only to realise I’ve already lost the game. It never discourages the playing.
Zilverster is an ongoing collaborative project between Sharon Goodwin and Irene Hanenbergh, Melbourne-based artists who have garnered strong individual reputations for their imaginative, elaborate and meticulously rendered expanded drawing and painting practices. While there are many shared interests and concerns between the two artists – (art) history, fantasy, cult iconography, alchemy, supernatural phenomena – each operates from a distinct temporal and imaginative framework: Goodwin’s contributions are embedded in a medieval, Gothic context while Hanenbergh’s derive from a European Romantic sensibility. Zilverster’s practice continues to develop out from an original series of beautiful, fantastical drawings that remain compelling in their strangeness. This work is a further investigation in the collaborative artistic process.
Note to reader: All artwork titles are printed as submitted by the artists. Photography credits: All photos have been provided by the artists unless otherwise stated. 99
2016 National Works on Paper A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition 16 July – 11 September 2016 Project management: Jane Alexander, Director, MPRG 2016 NWOP judges: Jane Alexander, Director, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery; Roger Butler, Senior Curator, Australian Prints and Drawings, National Gallery of Australia; Kirsty Grant, Director & CEO, Heide Museum of Modern Art Curatorial team: Danny Lacy (Curator, MPRG) and Narelle Russo (Co-registrar) Catalogue production: Rowena Wiseman External editor: Vanessa Pellatt Marketing and publicity: Rowena Wiseman and Sharon Wells (Pan and Bacchanalia) Design: Linton Design Printing: Blue Star Print ISBN: 978-0-9580956-0-0 Edition: 2016 Print run: 500 Š External authors and the Mornington Peninsula Shire
Authorised by Coordinator Arts and Culture, Mornington Peninsula Shire, Marine Parade Hastings