Copy of Photogravure, works in progress 2018

Permutations 2018, a series of six works, photogravure on paper.
All works created, proofed and editioned at Baldessin Press & Studio, December 2018.

Exhibited:

2019, Baldessin Press - The Story, curated by Baldessin Press, Monsalvat, Victoria, 25 July - 15 September
2019 - Plant + Human, curated by Allison Holland, Australian Centre for Photography, 15 Feb - 27 April.

This work has developed from a research residency undertaken in January 2018, supported by a artsACT project grant, to develop new work experimenting with Photogravure at Baldessin Press in collaboration with artist Silvi Glattauer. Please follow link to this page for more on this residency.

Purity in Form

Erica Seccombe, Purity in Form (2018) Photogravure on paper, 37 x 37 cm, edition 3.

Fixed Pleasure

Erica Seccombe, Fixed Pleasure (2018) Photogravure on paper, 37 x 37 cm, edition 3.

Ritual Thought

Erica Seccombe, Ritual Thought (2018) Photogravure on paper, 37 x 37 cm, edition 3.

Standing ceremony

Erica Seccombe, Standing ceremony (2018) Photogravure on paper, 37 x 37 cm, edition 3.

Offering of death

Erica Seccombe, Offering of death (2018) Photogravure on paper, 37 x 37 cm, edition 3.

Safe Return

Erica Seccombe, Safe Return (2018) Photogravure on paper, 37 x 37 cm, edition 3.

This series Permutations has developed from my interest in how artists respond to nature, the way nature is formalised and perfected through aesthetic explorations, and how we seek order and structure in nature to give meaning to existence through repetition, symmetry, rhythm and geometry.

Inspired by forms and patterns in nature, Victorian designer William Morris wrote on artistic interpretations, that ‘when it does not remind you of life beyond itself,’ then the image is futile. Morris was wary of human intervention in selective gardening, he appreciated the allure of double sunflowers and abundantly petaled roses, but viewed them as artificial aberrations of their wild and native originals.

However, for the artist Paul Klee, gardens cultivated by human hands represented the ultimate connection to creation, both in the life-giving sense, and in the act of creating art. He viewed the garden as neither nature nor art, but an intersection between human intention and natural life.

Through my practice I have been responding to how natural forms are represented through a subjective experiences of it. The titles of each work are drawn from the ceremonial traditions of Ikebana, evoking intimate ‘intersections’ between humans and plants. In their permutations they work as an act of reordering the experience between myself, the camera and the plant I am observing. Through my own aesthetic interpretations via a technological lens and the process of making, each work represents a form of life that now exists beyond its original meaning.

References:

A.H.R Ball,(Ed.) Selections from the prose works by William Morris, Cambridge University Press, 1931.
Dennis J. Schmidt, (2013). Klee’s Gardens. Research in Phenomenology 43 (3):394-404.