'Southern Circles', (2012), Ros Meeker, Photopolymer Etching, Watercolour

Onewall is delighted to be showing a selection of recent photopolymer etches by master printmaker, Ros Meeker for the months of May and June. The displayed work pays testimony to Ros’s extraordinary technical skills in images that are both immediately engaging and disconcertingly beyond our grasp.  Ros is a Research Masters candidate in Fine Arts at the University of Tasmania. The title of her current project is Familiar Ground: Expressing Post-Diasporic Scottish Identity through Collage and Print. Her work in recent years has considered psychological landscape. She resides on a secluded remnant farm, at the end of a road, in a wet sclerophyll forest, with her husband and fellow artist Brett Meeker and two springer spaniels.

'Mygenin', Robyn Silk (2010) Digital Print/etch

Onewall is hosting a revolving print exhibition throughout March and April. A selection of early works by current and former printmaking students from the Tasmanian School of Art will be exhibited, including artist proof and unique state prints. A great opportunity to see the formative works of some accomplished artists and pick up some early pieces at very reasonable prices. The works featured will be changed regularly as new works become available. I will try to keep the images updated online as well. Cheers Neil

'Phantasmagoria', (2011) Jane Slade, lithograph, linocut, mixed media

Printmaker Jane Slade is exhibiting a selection of her work at Onewall for the months of January and February. Jane works accross a wide range of printmaking techniques including stone lithography, etching and linocut. Jane has recently completed her Bachelor of Fine Art with Honours at the Tasmanian School of Art and her level of professionalism is clearly evident in the works on display.

Jane’s complex, haunting and lyrical works explore the relationship between contemporary attitudes around death and decay and Western fashion.

Fashion represents the state of being trapped by the ideal of perfection and the desire for eternal preservation. Just as death and decay are inevitable and necessary to life, so to is the outmoded to fashion. Therefore to remain relevant, fashion must generate a constant need or desire for renewal. fashion is in a constant state of reinvention, returning to the past, devouring itself to defy death. Jane Slade

As we are featuring the prints of Denise Atkinson at Onewall until the end of December, I thought we’d take the opportunity to look at what else she’s up to artistically. The following intriguing transfer drawings were created this year as part of Denise’s fine arts degree.

Artists Statement – Processes of Drawing

My theme for this project encompasses ideas of home, domestic spaces, fragmentation, loss and absence. The broader context of my work deals with lost space in response to environmental disasters/catastrophes in particular the loss of homes in the recent Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami.

Within this landscape of destruction are records of experience in the form of paper fragments – photographs, lists, diaries, books and calendars – and objects , possessions and ephemera, that shape who we are. I wanted to construct images that are composed of text and objects from the house/home in a deconstucted way. I am essentially looking at what happens when these records become mixed up,  deconstucted and placed randomly back together.

The techniques I used for this project are transfer prints and drawing collaged together. Transfer printing is a technique that uses solvent applied to  the image surface of the photocopy and by placing the dampened image face down on paper and rubbing it with a pencil on the back of the photocopy, transfers a single reversed image.I sourced images of the disaster from the internet and photocopied them in black and white.

I thought this medium would best  illustrate my theme. I wanted to place collaged fragments onto paper to capture the randomness of objects displaced and dislocated in the environment, as a result of the powerful forces of nature. The fragmentary  way the prints transfer to the page in lines, also helped to translate the idea. I also added my own range of marks with charcoal pencil to create energetic lines and to add strength and contrast between black and white. I didn’t want to create a focal point as I intended to create chaotic spaces.             Denise Atkinson

Revisiting some drawing techniques that I explored in 2nd year image development unit, to attempt to capture the essence of death in charcoal a la Mike Parr.

Parr began his charcoal self-portraits as an attempt to breathe life into such deathly photographic traces. According to conventional aesthetics, the traditional medium of charcoal should preserve the presence of the artist in the sense that it leaves a physical trace of the artist’s gestures. For Parr the charcoal medium seemed to promise a transfusion of life. But there is a distinct equivocation involved in this attempted transfusion, in that the charcoal medium, itself, consists of dead, burnt out, organic matter. http://members.optusnet.com.au/~robert2600/mparr.html

'Masking Death', (2011), Neil Holmstrom, maniere noire charcoal sketch, (36 x 42 cm)

Some pics of the first stages of the construction of my life mask. These images show the application of alginate followed by plaster soaked bandages to my face in preparation for the fibreglass cast from which the mask was made. The things you do for art! Special thanks again to Jake and Tanya Mikoda for their fantastic assistance and images.

Onewall is exhibiting an eclectic set of new prints from Denise Atkinson for the months of November and December. Denise’s work demonstrates a new sophistication in her hybridising of printmaking techniques. Lithographs, etchings, woodcuts and chine collé are all evidenced in this latest collection, which again references remembered spaces and captured moments. This work particularly reflects an intimate narrative of a journey through love and loss, home as sanctuary and fears surrounding the indefinite and the unexplored.

Here is my life mask, cold cast in bronze. This mask  was created with the great assistance of sculptor extraordinaire Jake Mikoda, as an artefact to accompany the presentation of my thesis. http://www.utas.edu.au/tools/recent-news/news/a-years-hard-work-on-the-walls

'Neil Holmstrom, Life mask, Cold cast bronze, life size

My research has uncovered an interesting phenomenon related to the death mask. Many believe that they can easily identify whether a mask is taken from the face of a living or dead person. This quiz demonstrates that perhaps this is not so. Scroll through the first ten images below and make a record of which masks you believe were taken from life and which from death. The following ten images provide the answers. Extra points if you can identify the person from which the mask was taken.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

1. William Blake Death mask

2. Heinrich Himmler Death mask

3. George Washington Life mask

4. Ludwig Van Beethoven Life mask

5. John Keats Death mask

6. William Wordsworth Life mask

7. Benjamin Franklin Life mask

8. Ned Kelly Death mask

9. John Keats Life mask

10. Yours Truly Life mask