In Thirteen Mediations on the Untranslatable, seriality offers a method to contemplate the temporal. Printmaking as a medium always contains the possibility of the multiple, and the slight variations in the thirteen etchings are intended for close viewing. The multi-plate bleed etchings are intended to be uncontained and therefore contemplative and enigmatic, deliberately at a scale to draw the viewer in to personal encounter. The etchings are accompanied by a thirteen-stanza poem of the same name. The images and text are intended to provide complementary entry points into the meditation: each etching with its own stanza displayed below or beside it. The etchings employ the same two spit-bitten plates that form a base layer that is then overprinted with different, abstract line etchings, that resemble the mode but not the meaning of words and so are not prescriptive of interpretation. This work was shown in 2017 at a group exhibition Connect-ed by the NightLadder Collective at the Brisbane Institute of Art.
Angela Gardner
Angela Gardner’s first poetry collection Parts of Speech (UQP, 2007) won the Thomas Shapcott Arts Queensland Poetry Prize; then followed Views of the Hudson (Shearsman Books, UK), and two fine press collaborations: twelve labours, with visual artist Gwenn Tasker, and The Night Ladder with artist Lisa Pullen, all 2009. Her poems have been anthologised multiple times in the ‘Best Australian Poetry’ series. Her most recent collections are The Told World (selected poetry) (Shearsman Books, UK) and Thing&Unthing (Vagabond Press, Sydney), both 2014, and a chapbook with artist Caren Florance, The future, unimagined (Recent Work Press & Ampersand Duck, Canberra, 2017). In 2018 she was awarded an Australia Council new work grant. A manuscript, Some Sketchy Notes on Matter, was shortlisted for the Dorothy Hewitt Award for an Unpublished Manuscript 2018. She edits at www.foame.org.
