Biophilia Exhibition at PCA Gallery

Biophilia explores the human-nature relationship within an urban context to consider the importance of restoring, preserving and enhancing native habitat and species to foster the instinctive need humans have for this connection. This is a group show. The exhibiting artists are Alexis Beckett, Nicholas Chilvers, Kate Gorringe-Smith, Andrej Kocis, Helen Kocis Edwards, Athena Lim Malamas, Helen Timbury, Jessi Wong and Rebecca Young.

Reponding to the theme of Biophilia* my new work for this exhibition is about the remnant bush areas I am drawn to when I seek the outdoors. These places are becoming increasingly valuable to me as housing development builds up around my peri-urban hometown of Drouin. In summer at dusk, I walk to my street’s end to see flying fox silhouettes around the remnant eucalypt growing metres from the V-line tracks. On a damp May Saturday I can find myself anointed with birdcall and the scent of leaf litter on a bush track 20 minutes drive from home. I hope for the survival of these restorative tracts of wild bush sandwiched between farmland and new housing development, road and infrastructure.

This work is quite different to my previous printmaking. Initially I created large linoblocks, planning to edition them in traditional layers. Around this time I was incredibly inspired by Heather Shimmen’s exhibition at Latrobe Regional Gallery. I returned three times just to gaze at it. At a subsequent master class organised by LRG at Arc Yinnar Heather passed on techniques of mark making, layering and overprinting using stencils, masks and lino blocks with acrylic sheet monotypes printed in layers of transparent inks. There were no rules.

Back at the studio I found a huge freedom in printing bleed prints, without having to wait for the layers to dry! Following Heather’s mantra, “nothing is perfect”, many of the prints have hues built up from 5-8 transparent layers. I still made use of my initial large linoblocks depicting bush tracks, forest and canopy but Heather’s shared techniques allowed me to push my imagery so much further and for this I will be eternally grateful.

Nothing happens in vacuum and I feel timing is an important factor in how our responses evolve. I was enabled by purchasing Ruby Pilven‘s large press a couple of years before; studio time was endless and ample for me this February. There was the opportunity to create the themed work for this exhibition organised by Helen Kocis Edwards, dovetailed with Heather’s exhibition and and workshop. Layers of influence and opportunity led to this work. As they say, the stars aligned.