Franck Gohier, Big Boss, 2012, 4-colour screenprint, hand-printed on acid-free, carbon-neutral 290gsm ivory board. Courtesy artist and Red Hand Prints, Darwin:www.redhandprints.com
We're All in this Together
In the course of my work I often ask artists why they make
art. Some shrug, others try and put it into words. Listening to artists respond
to the question is like watching someone trying to catch a cloud. When it comes
down to it there is rarely one simple reason. Like most things in life it’s
complicated.
Art making is not a way of life that makes much sense within
the parameters of late capitalism. In dollar terms a cost benefit analysis
weighs in at cost over benefit nine times out of ten. I don’t think I am
speaking out of line when I say that artists’ often have a fragile sense of
their economic self worth. For those without the cushioning effects of inherited
wealth it’s a painful internal odyssey. Few worker bees think about value – the
value of their work, how they are valued, what they value, where they belong – as much as artists. In some way it makes them
particularly sensitive to the question of community.
Community and Context draws
together artists working in the ‘expanded field’ of printmaking and the
assembled objects in the gallery include sculpture, artist’s books, typography,
poster art, etchings, wall drawing, and screen-based work. The exhibition
attests to the broad boundaries of printmaking. Moving between the works feels
like working a puzzle – there’s a strong sense of interconnectedness between artworks. Many of the works display an
interest in history, from early printmaking traditions referenced by Ruth
Johnstone in her wood engraving, photocopy and kinetic sculpture and eX de
Medici and Rosalind Atkins Our Corporate Who Art in Heaven, an etching and engraving that combines botanical
illustration and gas masks to subversive effect.
Echoes of war and the tensions of nationhood appear in other
works. Study the digital prints of Neil Emmerson and the comical Abu
Grahib-like figures lolling on the ground. Or Ruby Pilven’s installation Micro-boundaries
that uses stamps to mimic the alienating
procedures of institutional bureaucracies as they relate to asylum seekers. Or
Stewart Russell’s silky national flags draped over a stand, like some kind of
forlorn and forgotten relic from a United Nations meeting.
Failed colonial endevours pop up elsewhere. Check out Franck
Gohier’s humorous screenprinted poster Big Boss, in which the Phantom, a popular comic book figure in indigenous and
pacific communities finds himself knocked out by a boomerang. Gohier’s poster
can be situated in a longstanding tradition of politically engaged posters from
Australian poster workshops stretching from Earthworks Poster Collective to
Redback Graphix and beyond that drew on the vernacular to draw attention to
various social issues and causes from the 1970s through to the mid 1990s.
Caren Florence/Ampersand Duck’s Book of
Michael Pageplay: WAR/RAW 1 & 2 pays
tribute to Michael Callaghan (1952-2012), the founder of Redback Graphix. Callaghan’s
work at the time of his death focussed on the Iraq war. It brought together a
deep sense of compassion for the victims of war and violence and contempt for
the doublespeak of its perpetrators. Caren Florence/Ampersand Duck and Callaghan had been in
discussion about a collaborative project at the time of his death. War and
history.
Australian political printmaking informs Emily Floyd’s series
of prints, made as part of the Australian Print Workshop Collie Print Trust Printmaking Scholarship. Floyd devised the work after hearing a radio program about the
Sydney-based collective Earthworks (1972–1979). Utilizing aquatint, an intaglio
printmaking technique where texture is applied onto a plate (in this instance
both copper and aluminium) Floyd's predominantly small works make bold
proclamations such as 'It's Time' and 'The Problem Is the Solution' in display
typefaces that recall William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement.
Arranging the type into simple shapes, particularly circles, squares and
diamonds, the prints bring to mind the principles behind alternative education
philosophies. Floyd is clearly fascinated by the subject, she has exhibited an
oversized Steiner rainbow in the past. Staring at Floyd's prints you feel
poised on the cusp of a mystical revelation.
Trent Walter’s deadpan work, Cover Version #1 (Island) and Cover Version #2 (Expose), similarly appropriate
graphic traditions from yesteryear. Walter draws on an existing archive of text
and images to re-imagine historical magazines that fall somewhere between academic
journal and National Geographic. His works display a strong awareness of the
history of production processes. In this respect they are pitch perfect.
There’s no doubt that Walter is making some kind of statement about imperialism
but its difficult not to feel seduced by their seriousness and nostalgic
optimism. Are they critique or celebration? A bit of both?
The history of printmaking is the history of the book and
unsurprisingly books, and the associated field of typography, loom large in
this show. Gene Bawden’s investigation into the “turnabouts” pattern devised by
early Australian designer Florence Broadhurst pushes letterform from the
legible to the decorative and abstract. Nicci Haynes, Thomas Coish and Jonas
Ropponen take books as a point of departure but arrive at vastly different
destinations. Haynes’ obsessional re-working of the Irish classic Finnegan’s
Wake into an installation of shredded pages
has a touch of the crazies. It’s a place that Jonas Ropponen and his paper
mache bust also ventures. In each of these artworks paper has been shredded and
pulped, folded over and overprinted.
To counter the drama, there are scenes of repose. Raymond
Arnold’s lush and detailed representations of local landscapes, Bridget Hillebrand's monochromatic mountain climbing maps, John Loane’s abstract etchings and Marion
Crawford’s sparkling, delicate disks that twirl and in space. They gesture
towards a state of grace, remind us of our connectedness to the world around
us, one another.
Catalogue essay for Community and Context.
6 February – 12 March 2013
MADA Gallery
Monash University Caulfield, Building G
900 Dandenong Road
Caulfield East Victoria 3145
Monday-Friday: 10am-5pm
Saturday: 12-5pm
Sunday and Public Holidays: Closed
