Solo Exhibition of ceramics and etchings produced during a 2 week Residency at CoFA – College of Fine Arts – Paddington Sydney
Each year the college of Fine arts awards a residency and a solo exhibition to an Aboriginal artist who has submitted work for consideration in the Parliament of NSW Aboriginal Art Prize. the prize is known as the CoFA professional development Award and the winner each year is provided with a 2 week residency working with any of CoFA’s master practitioners developing their artistic skills and knowledge or obtaining new ones.
The result of this intensive program is a solo show at CoFAspace, a gallery on the Paddington campus providing an opportunity for the recipient to work in a professional capacity learning all aspects of the exhibition process from installing the works to the design of the catalogue and invitation.
The recipient of the 2009 Award, had a clear objective for her residency. This was to translate core ideas explored in the mediums of her conventional practice, particularly ceramics and drawing, into images that fully exploited the distinctive quality of the printed intaglio mark. Evans had an initial introduction to the medium by the technical demonstrator at CoFA’s custom printing workshop, Ben Rak, who spent several days demonstrating a range of working options. Using a combination of formal and informally drawn patterns, Evans explored different methods of mark making from fine line etching to broad marks applied with a brush, to establish the structure of her matrixes. She then experimented with a range of unfamiliar technical procedures by adding tonal and textural layers. not content with printing with just one etching plate she introduced 2 and then 3 plates into the mix, creating increasingly complex images that elegantly combine intricacy with spontaneity. the experience garnered as a result of making these etchings was that it offered Evans a fresh, new vehicle for the telling of her familiar stories.
Throughout the residency Evans demonstrated a positive, open approach and this willingness to venture into new territory clearly reinforces one of the crucial benefits of this award. Evans has created a strong body of work in this her first contact with intaglio printing but in so doing she has talked freely about the ideas that inspire her and underpin her artistic practice to the students at CoFA UNSW who assisted in its production.
The CoFA professional development Award has allowed Penny Evans to broaden her artistic vocabulary and to develop new collaborative working relationships but it has also offered those who have been in contact during her 2 weeks in the print studios an opportunity to learn much from this talented NSW Indigenous artist.
Tess Allas and Michael Kempson
I wrote about the work produced:
Walka is a word from Pitjantjatjara of Pukatja/Ernabella meaning individual designs based on a personal idiom. Walka is also telling a story in your mind.
I am a patternmaker. the practice of repeating, dissecting and evolving patternings in my ceramics practice has been a journey of self-discovery and enlightenment of cultural artistic practices from my roots in north western NSW. Etching into zinc plates was an easy and natural progression from this and the multiple plate aspect of most of the etchings fits – metaphorically – with the multi-layering of meaning in my work.
The work in Releasing Walka is a response to the process of etching. Already worked imagery and patterning have been transferred into and have evolved through new processes such as dry point, aquatinting and spit biting.
The large multiple plate etchings produced during my residency are an homage to the dendroglyphs (carved trees) of Gomeroi/Kamilaroi country; the country of my Ancestors. The images have an ethereal quality and evoke a ghostlike presence. Carved iconography was a strong practice in these traditional societies and featured on ritual, hunting, everyday objects and ground carvings. tree carvings were also employed for use in initiation and mortuary ceremonies.. The trees were like signposts or telegraphs – they transmitted information. There are only remnants of these remarkable trees left.
the story of cultural/environmental annihilation of these trees leads into the rationale of the blood maps etchings. these small multiple plate etchings are about movement, chaos, streaming, multiple directions and layers that are metaphors for the chaos of displacement and dispersion from country for aboriginal people and are suggestive of the diasporic east coast populations, of which I am a part.
The single plate etching set including Critical Mass, Settle, Swarm genealogy seek to illustrate the nature of a population movement, settlement and connection (be it cellular, human or insect) and the small ceramic masks titled Longfaces are at once an expression of grief for our displacement and are my symbols for butterflies, which symbolise renewal and hope.
The butterfly design is created from the dissection of the diamond design, which was traditionally a symbol much used on the dendroglyphs and other carved objects.
the halved or hatched ceramic eggs, Egg Encasement series, refer to emu eggs. At the time of my CoFA residency emu’s in the north west of NSW were laying their eggs – an annual event represented in the Milky Way by a ‘hole’ or dark shape only ever seen during the egg-laying time.
Don’t Look Back is a sentiment embedded in my maternal and paternal family intergenerationally, and a response to escape and survival from genocide.
This series of works seek to tell a broad story of the Aboriginal history in NSW the the artist’s personal idiom or ‘Walka’. Penny Evans