[Report]

I work eclectically and keep a source material file of stored images ranging from collected photocopies, newspaper and magazine clippings, book illustrations, my own and other

photographs and written material, on a variety of subjects, objective and more personal in theme. Some are related directly to particular ideas and topics, others are stored until defined for inclusion in a particular work. Images are chosen and arranged for their private symbolic or visual meaning.

I start a piece through some kind of basic impulse which may be inspired by pictorial elements but in other cases the work originates from a theme.

The work is my collaboration of material symbols of thought and imagination. The strategy is to draw a series of subtle visual, verbal and textural threads of comparison between separate images. I employ the process of association rather than disassociation that underlies the bringing together of images, seeking a congruous thread of affinities, however intangible.

The major concerns in my work are social issues and the individuals position. I see man as a creature worthy of admiration and as a victim of contemporary circumstances.

Also a characteristic of photography is tonality, a quality I have used to imitate the images rather than translating them through abstract colour which for me is a separate issue. Another tonal influence is my response to the physical climate of Tasmania, the 'terminal grey English' atmosphere, where I grew up. A lot of my work consists of a strong contrast between black and white and in specific cases, such as 'Trigger-happy, Gunboat Diplomacy, Cowboy Mentality" and 'Loss and Chance' the

intention was to present these in a stark way.

'I don't believe that artists really wield any significant power. At best one can focus attention'.

Hans Haacke

"The show's over and the monkey's dead - There's always another one to take it's place', and 'Trigger-happy, Gunboat Diplomacy, Cowboy Mentality' both contain a political element.

'Anti Ronald Reagan'. Both are fine art prints and are not to be relegated to the role of a political mouth-piece. Instead they explore the visual relationship between the artist, the medium itself and the image. These images have been adapted from other media, such as newspaper clippins and are set into a new tension, re-emerging in through the formats of day after day mainstream media.

evil, speak no evil - and here I have drawn an allegory to the behaviour of politicians in the media. The second part "There's always another monkey to take it's place' is a finale to the three T.V. screens. The T.V. set is introduced, the fourth T.V. screen is underlined to bring it into the fore-ground, focusing on the T.V. image. Who better to play the role of the president than an actor?

'Trigger-happy, Gunboat Diplomacy, Cowboy Mentality' is presented in the bold format of the film strip, but goes further than a political statement of anti Reagan protest in South America. I have emphasized the sensual and tactile qualities to represent the layers of emulsion of a negative. The structure of the film itself has become the object rather than the image on the film.

In the first print it has surpassed the importance of the image of Ronald Reagan, and placed him on the same level as the mass of South American people. The only power of recognition Reagan is allowed is a moulded 'plastic' form and his hand is drawn into a comparison with the man holding a gun, also built up with layers of ink.

The third print is a further manipulation of the same image but a silent state as opposed to the harsh contrast of black and white. Throughout the series I have manipulated the screen printing medium by building up layers of ink thus giving form to the human images.

In the fourth print the figure holding the gun is cut off, only the torso and the action is given recognition - Identity is irrelevant. The image exists as a comparative, an equivalent symbol of Reagan's power and policies, the gun a simile to Reagan's hand.

The print 'NEXT' although of a political context is presented on more emotional terms. The imagery and visual relationship being manipulated through the medium in a more sensual manner. The print was based on research into icons and frescoes. I was inspired to achieve the quality shown in

reproductions of frescoes, that of the many thin layers of paint revealed by their decaying state. The first layer of ink I printed was a textural brush mark, which remains faintly

These figures are merely silhouettes, supressed in flatness and have no dimension beyond height and breadth, they cast no shadows, their reality derived from a newspaper clipping. The portraits are printed so transparently they seem to fade and merge with the landscape making their (our) reality transient to the already removed reality of other peoples suppression.

Like the Byzantine artist's desire to humanize I have used an image to display emotions through gesture. The first

portrait is a gesture of sorrow, despair, grief, the hands holding the head; impotent to help except by tears. It is a classic pose, the female in the traditional role of the

mourner. The second portrait is similar but less definable and introduces another element, man in conflict with himself, symbolized by the earing being worn. The earing evokes associations of a bullet.

Although the two portraits are fused into the picture frame, their transparency allows the verticals of the landscape and the line of figures to counteract the division.

I feel the metal-gray tonalities of the artist proof may be more symbolic or suggestive but the brown-gray tonalities of the printed edition still convey the idea and express the

appropriate mood.

'Loss and Chance' is a funnerary tableau - vivant, a triptych of fragmented connections. The theme is only suggested. The images are linked by being contained in a

In the first image the viewer also participates in this theatrical performance. The perspective places the viewer above the scene and directs them to the same focal point viewed by the assembled cast, the black void at the end of the stage.

The second image is like a tablet, worn weathered, not clearly definable, already part of the past. The inscription:

'Words, Sounds, No Connections. No Touching. Going through the motions. She was isolated within her own experience. Walls of words passed by and she watched like a stranger looking out of the window of a train, moving through a foreign country. She never thought of her as being dead. She thought about loss and chance, about what one saves and what one buries. The sound of a voice, a gesture'.

Jacki Apple

is a personal transcript of feelings, a literal image. These ideas are reflected in the pictorial images. The idea of still being alone in a group. The figures in the first image are surrounded by a white outline, delineated in their isolation and separateness, and in the second print focused on the individual, represented in the image of the hands and feet.

The final image is 'what one saves', the gesture, dis-cernible from the rest of the fragmenting state.

'Because the event itself is so filled with sensual i

exaggeration and imaginings and disappointments and the events are so distorted a person departs from the truth in the very effort to be cool and objective, and if one seeks to portray the intoxication one falls into

conceptualizing. Was it a matter of the whole? Or of a fragment?'

has a congruous affinity with the intense distilled image, the dramatised gesture. It is necessary to read both parts.

The image originated from a found object, which had already been selected by someone else and transformed through

photocopying, the first break down stage from the original photograph. Then further through words which were heavily printed on the other side of the paper, leaving an impression on the image. The fold marks of the paper were also recorded. I re-selected the image and further transformed it by the

photographic process, manipulating it into four different stages, each individual in character. One appeared in reverse, in the series 'Loss and Chance", manipulated to a semi abstract state, the gesture being just definable.

The overall appearance of the negative image in 'Was it a matter of the whole? Or of a fragment?" is like a computer read-out emphasizing the mechanical processes employed. The written element is also in context, being processed in the form of type. A further description of the mechanical is the

to the strong dark positive, emphasising the text and identifying individual words.

The fourth image was manipulated so the figure appeared with more clarity at the expense of the breakdown of the background and was used in an experimental construction piece. Due to my lack of knowledge of the technical areas involved in producing such a construction I feel the finished object doesn't work on a professional level, and the idea was much greater than the result. The image printed on the glass is an allegory to the human body, the rock on the spring housed in a steel frame as the heart enclosed by the rib cage. I feel this image is too contrasty, the lack of detail making it difficult to identify. The format of the construction allowed both images to be viewed simultaneously.

Prior to the Post-Graduate Course the concerns in my imagery was fragmentation as a condition of modern life

presented through a series of experiences which are superimposed in selected experiences of my childhood. 'Belonging to the Past' is a continuation of this theme. The series is an interaction of social history and personal history and an open ended invitation for speculation about the particulars of place, time, identity. The three tablets are the remainder of the lost, destroyed whole.

The second state is confused with layers of colours and images like the aftermath of a bill board poster. I used all the area of the tablet, grouping images together, then further emphasised different parts of the visual repertoire by isolating images through scale and proportion and colour leaving the whole less definable while refocusing on subtle gestures which evoke stronger associations.

The third state is warmer. The image of the little girls is presented as a piece of memorabilia, like snapshots from a family album. Superimposed over that constant state of decay. Decorative elements are manipulated on an emotional level. Colour is used as a symbol such as pink and as associations of moods such as blue and gray. The colour only exists within the two dimensions of the small girl and her environment.

'Surrogate' and 'A part of Apart From' concentrate on the feeling of physical dislocation using specific references such as the sea and maps. In 'Surrogate' the familiar image of the T.V. is used in a topical sense, it is a window into the world, a form of media. For many it is the world and not even a surrogate one. I have used it to project an image of loneliness. The cold tones of the sea are symbolic of the feeling of alienation and distance. There is no horizon. The feeling is as endless as the sea.

vivid actuality nor symbolic clarity and for the time being I was utterly nowhere'.

Saul Bellows In 'A part of Apart From' the torso is caught in limbo. Cut off at the legs and the head. A dislocation forbidding the absolute unity. To take the photograph I projected a map onto the model, thus the body becomes a physical map of emotion. ' The lines of the map an assimilation to the veins of the body. The second state is a 'blue-print' - a copy of the emotion, a

two-dimensional plan for the first composition, which has strong suggestions of the third dimension.

The works, 'To Dream of Life Ashore', 'Pissed On Then Pissed O f f , 'My Dearest Sue', 'Stab in the Back' and 'Atrophy' are all variations of the theme of emotional dislocation. What more can I say? They are explanations. Most of the imagery is self-referential. Colour is relegated to the tonalities of gray, blue, dirty yellows to emphasize a painful atmosphere of emptiness and depression. An exception is one of the images of

'Stab in the Back'. Although the background is full of delicate colour, it soon fades back to gray. A refocusing from the background to the figure.

'Atrophy' is a summation of the theme. An exhausted figure consumed by words. Imprisoned by one's sorrow, within the stained page torn from a dairy, from a moment in time.

In conclusion, I feel this body of work has helped me to refine the technical processes involved in printmaking

interaction between artistic idea and the physical printing medium, the finished object being a cohesion of the two.

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