GEMMA KING
Gemma King, 33, 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.
“Body of Water” is a flow-on of ideas from recent work and exhibitions focused on the drought, the bushfires and its effect on the landscape. This new suite of one-off jigsaw single plate reduction linocut prints respond to the area’s familiar rolling pastures that these past two seasons of Renaissance-style rainfall has brought to the New England region. This moment of respite seemed to me to be an opportunity to record the area's famed yet vulnerable intermittent running wild rivers.
The work’s palette and structure have been simplified, brightened and sharpened. Using thicker ink, more layers and introducing jigsaw to the reduction process has allowed me to touch on the sense of volume, density and boldness seen in this drought-free landscape.
All of my prints are one-off works; each print (8 from each plate total for this exhibition “Body of Water”) having its own treatment and colourway throughout the reduction layering process means I have multiple chances to cohesively solve a particular view using colour to help reflect the ever-changing moods of the views I visit regularly on my mustering travels through the ever-changing seasons of my home.” Gemma Jean King on her 2022 Solo Exhibition, Body of Water