To Shadow

In this work for the Installation Space at Canberra Museum and Art Gallery I was exploring how process, materiality and place interact to develop meaning in a work. The work was based on the shadows of trees on Gundaroo Common.  My interest was not in representing the trees but rather acknowledge the space between the tree and the ground that the body occupies.  The shadows are on the horizontal and as we gaze at them they shimmer and shift with the breeze revealing the spaces and gaps in the canopy above and the undulating ground below our feet.  We are reminded of our vertical stance in the world and of our eventual decline back on to the ground.

Printmaking requires working on the horizontal as the matrix needs to be printed by an even flat pressure either by hand or by a press.  This work was developed on the ground outside my studio and eventually hand printed in an adaptation of Japanese printmaking techniques.  I am fascinated by the flip from the horizontal to the vertical that occurs when a work is peeled off the matrix.  I often think of the space between matrix and paper in a similar way to the space between tree and shadow.  It is a rich and fertile area that appears to stir the imagination.  In my installations I like to maintain this tension by installing the matrix along with the print.

For me the shadows are the traces of time that shimmer across the surface of the land, revealing and concealing what lies beneath.  As I walk around the common my shadow merges with those of the trees and the clouds and occasionally breaks free to be seen moulding itself to the undulations of the land.  The ground affects the shadows making them into shape shifters, at times identifiable and at others a puzzle that may echo with a deeply held memory.  These shifting forms were traced at a moment in time and made into woodcuts and printed onto Japanese paper.  The shapes are part of an interconnected network of what is horizontal, vertical and in-betweeen.

On Becoming

Becoming is a print installation that uses a rhizome model to investigate the site of Gundaroo Common.  The Common is a remnant from an older way of life that has remained relevant and integral to community life.  Through its continuance it is now a site for the preservation of rare native grasslands and fauna. The print encourages an immersion in the numerous intertwined connections on the common. Becoming is a print installation investigating the possibility of a rhizome model to communicate ideas on identity and belonging. My print follows Deleuze’s concept that a rhizome is similar to a map. It can be detachable, connectable, reversible, modifiable and have multiple entryways and exits. I have developed the work from meandering through long grasses following animal tracks on Gundaroo Common.  This site, set aside for villagers to raise cattle on as well as for the preservation of native flora and fauna, shows the potential for continuing negotiations between people and place. The prints are based on Japanese woodblocks and are hand printed from jigsaw woodblocks. The thin Japanese paper reveals the traces of the printing process accentuating the horizontality of the technique. When this is placed vertically it questions our own vertical stance in the world. Are we above or below ground, floating or buried? The work can be pasted to the wall and floors with rice paste. Or they can be pinned, hung, slung or laid over the floor in an interaction with the space allocated for the work. Importantly for me, the work enters into the real space as it takes on the wall of the gallery; it is not an illusion.  The rhizomes travel up the wall, hinting at the walls eventual demise back into the earth. As with Deleuze’s rhizome theory, this work has multiple offshoots, each section can break away and become a new one, there is not a linear progressive path but many possibilities in many different dimensions. The work in progress at the Canberra School of Art, ANU  The work installed at the Faculty Gallery, Monash University, Caulfield campus as part of the Impact7 printmaking symposium, 2011.  It is next to work by Rebecca Mayo who did a performance in front of the work.