GEMMA KING
Gemma King, is a local Walcha artist specialising in Printmaking. She has returned to the farm and Walcha after travelling abroad and completing her BFA at National Art School, Darlinghurst.
Gemma’s recent work is inspired by the ever changing rural landscape that surrounds her. Working predominantly in the reduction linocut printmaking medium, Gemma aims to separate her work from the traditional format of printmaking by exclusively creating one-off/unique prints, making no test prints or editions.
Each reduction print has been treated as its own work with its own colour combination. This way of working helps her to fully explore the subject and the effects that colour composition can achieve.
Being a farmer, Gemma will often see views of her farm changing dramatically depending on light, season, rain and wind; this idea of the one landscape being depicted in an array of moods sits well with her understanding of the land and its transient nature.
FLOCK
This collection of 23 single-plate reduction linocut monoprints have all been made simultaneously over the course of 9 months, with careful focus in making each work with its own colourway throughout the lengthy process to ensure each works singularity.
The images drawn from photos taken over the past 2 years during various grazier stints on my families’ sheep and cattle farm in Walcha, NSW. The daily procession, finding fresh water and shelter for the flock with their differing needs in various seasons holds new meaning, distance and separation has gilded the simple routine. In a world where technology and mass production takes us further from the beauty of craftsmanship, I find myself ever drawn the long process of the hand-made, hand-carved lino print.