August 4, 2009 – Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive

Exhibition dates: 22nd July – 15th August 2009

Sarah Amos (Australian, b. 1965)
Red Walk
2009
Collagraph and Monoprint

An interesting exhibition of Collagraphs (a type of collage printmaking)1 and etchings is presented by Sarah Amos at Gallery 101, Melbourne, work that is full of delicate coloured layering, topographical mapping and nodal, rhizomic and Spirogyra-type structures.

The ‘flux’ of the work, it’s musical cadence if you like, is the fusion of palimpsestic markings as viewed from the air – the dotted contours, the ploughed fields, the beautiful spatial layering that has an almost Kandinsky-like effect – with the aesthetics of Japanese paper, matt black colour (that subtly glistens on close inspection) and the tactility of the surface of the work. These intersections produce images that have some outstanding resonances: vibrations of energy that ebb and flow around the gallery space. These works are captivating!

For me the simpler images were the more successful especially the series named Intersections with their muted tonalities, shifting colours and topographical structure. They also reminded me of the black and white aerial landscape photography of Emmet Gowin (see below).

While I am unsure of the validity of the ‘landscape’/’urban lens’ ‘urban temperature’ references (which I found unnecessary and slightly irrelevant) these works and their synaptic interfaces must be experienced. For the viewer they hold a strange attraction as you stand before them drawn, inexorably, into their penumbral spaces. Recommended.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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Many thankx to gallery 101 for allowing me to publish the art work in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

1. “A Collagraph print is a collage printmaking technique and is a form of Intaglio printing. The collagraph plate is printed in the same way as etchings, but also include the basic principle of relief printing and can be printed either as intaglio or relief.

The term collagraph refer to a collage board where the materials are assembled on a flat base or plate (matrix) to form a relief block with different surface levels and textures.

Collagraph plates are created by sticking and gluing materials like textured paper or fabric onto the plate and then coat it with varnish or acrylic medium afterwards to protect the materials.

Anonymous. “Printmaking: Collagraphs/Collage Blocks,” on the ArtistTerms.com website [Online] Cited 03/08/2009 no longer available online

Sarah Amos (Australian, b. 1965)
Storm Loading
2009
Etching and hand drawing on Shiramine Japanese paper

Installation views of Intersections by Sarah Amos at Gallery 101, Melbourne
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Emmet Gowin (American, b. 1941)
Harvest traffic over agricultural pivot near Hermiston, Orgeon, 1991
1991
Gelatin silver print

Sarah Amos (Australian, b. 1965)
Intersections 8
2009
Collagraph with gouache

“(Flux) – where a total electric or magnetic field passes through a surface.”

My work is a fusion of both land and cityscape. I am interested in interpreting spatially dynamic, real and half forgotten landscapes through an urban lens. New to this body of work is my interest in the visual graphics of scientific diagrams in which dynamic and informative landscapes are drafted into linear minimal lines. I have absorbed this distilled language, translating it into an architectural and organic landscape where the intersections of line, volume and space are constantly in flux. This obscure knowledge is pared down, simplified and ordered into a clean analysis ready for instant translation.

The Australian landscape is central to my work and influences my use of colour, idiosyncratic marks and open space. These works are personalised maps of accumulated information, like printed histories, that record the duelling intersections where the weathers of the landscape and the urban temperature have begun to take on new and vital immediacy.”

Sarah Amos, 2009

Text from the Gallery 101 website [Online] Cited 01/08/2009 no longer available online