Seven Printmakers Respond to Place
“It is in providing outward display for things and pathways as they exist within the horizons of landscape that ‘places’ enable memories to become inwardly inscribed and possessed: made one with the memorial self. The visibility without becomes part of the invisibility within.”
- Edward S. Casey
There are places we go, places we meet people, places we use, we talk about being in an unhappy place and of objects that remind us of places. That broad range of the use of ‘place’ is reflected in the diversity of this exhibition. What distinguishes a place, what makes it somewhere as opposed to nowhere, is the significance that an individual or a group attributes to it. Sometimes actual real places, sometimes imaginary, fictional places, each artist here teases out their relationship to their place, exploring what they find meaningful.
SHANA JAMES
Using Alice in Wonderland as a point of departure for her own creative musings, Shana navigates the metaphorical landscape of Carroll’s imagination. Elements from the story combine with the fabric of her life to create a poetic vision of this fantastic place. Questions of identity, childhood innocence, angst and absurdity, surface in these psychologically charged prints.
NADIA CULLINANE
By drawing inspiration from folk tales, Nadia explores place and belonging through identity and self-discovery, producing narratives with personal resonance yet retaining an allegorical quality. Recurring motifs of nature and scale reflect growth and renewal in these elaborately detailed images.
MARI KATAYAMA
Mari’s atmospheric responses to everyday objects enable us to see the extraordinary in the ordinary. In Japan, Mari owned a micro-restaurant and her reverence for the kitchen as a place is contained in these images. The tiny scale beckons the viewer closer in order to contemplate these small stories of every-day life.
ELMARI STEYN
Growing up in Namibia, surrounded by rare plants, deserts and wind-scoured shores, Elmari’s work reflects her deep connection to the environment. Meditating upon our relationship to nature, her prints explore the experience of transition and sense of place.
LAURA WHITTOCK
Laura’s art practice grows out of the process of intricately carving lino, allowing her to become absorbed in patterns and textures. Informed by experiences and encounters while cycling from England to China during the course of a life changing year, these whimsical lino cuts explore the ways that identity responds to ‘place’.
MEGAN GOSLING
These artworks reconstruct remembered domestic patterns, examining pattern as a link to memory of place. The distortion of memory has a ‘Chinese whisper’ effect creating new patterns that reference the original and are at once familiar...but are not accurate historical “documents”.
HARVEY MULLEN
These copper plate etchings retrace the artist’s steps through the wilderness of Tasmania. One scene leads onto the next, moving deeper into the mountains and further away from civilisation. Within an image it’s often possible to glimpse the site of the next image’s point of view, creating a powerful sense of continuity, linking each picture to the next in the series.
