Opening Speech
for
Incisive Visions
By Jeannette Davison
July 2013
Art at Linden Gate
I was speaking to another Yarra Valley artist recently and we agreed that the golden moments
when travelling the world are the unexpected experiences you bump into when behaving like a
local. If I were a tourist to this area and bumped into this exhibition, it would become one of
those travel stories that I would revel in retelling on my return home.
Here’s what I’d be saying to all and sundry at my homecoming.
“You won’t believe what we discovered on the way to Healesville Sanctuary. We hired a car and
drove through the most gorgeous countryside and were doing lots of oohing and aahing as each
new vista seemed to rival the last. Our senses were so heightened that when we saw a sign for Art
at Linden Gate our curiosity led us to pull off the road to see what was on offer.
Oh bliss oh joy. We discovered four of the regions most talented artists. All of whom depicted
that oh so picturesque area in their own unique way through the medium of lino prints.
One artist called Kate Hudson showed her love of the local flora in such a way that I derived even
more pleasure from her prints than I would have if the real thing had been on display. Beautiful
coloured lino prints, featured vases filled with abundant quantities of flowering gums and other
indigenous plants, all composed in such a way that they echoed the geometric patterns on the
ceramic vases that contained them. She reminded me of another great Australian artist called
Margaret Preston. A little google search that night in my hotel room revealed that a creative
handbag designer from Melbourne, called Catherine Manuel has collaborated with Kate and uses
two reproductions of her work on her fabulous tote bags. A must have in any self respecting girls
wardrobe.
Libby Shreiber made me laugh out loud with her great big chook scratching and picking over tiny
houses, like a chook version of Gulliver on his travels through Lilliput… Each image Libby had
created was full of tiny surprises to delight and fascinate. The titles of her work were obviously
important and added to the experience of each print in their own special way.
The work of the third artist, Margaret McLoughlin, apparently a local to the area, not surprisingly
reminded me of the terrain we had just travelled. Rural vistas dotted with trees, cows and sheep,
idyllic with a hint of menace. I know that terrifying fires roared through the area and I wondered
if they were responsible for the hint of disquiet that I was picking up. Before I began my travels,
another friend showed me paintings by Margaret McLoughlin, her use of colours and patterns
made me think about landscape in a whole new way. Her prints had a similar effect and let me
know her ability for imagination and invention.
Remember that great graphic book called Hidden that we enjoyed together? The artist who
created it, Mirranda Burton, was the fourth artist in that gallery. What a find. The gallery owner
told me that she has been engaged in a residency at Clifton Pugh’s aptly named Dunmoochin
where she has made prolific use of his old printing press. References to her residency abound in
the works. A curious old fox, seen one night silhouetted against her bedroom window at
Dunmoochin, spawned a whole series of prints where foxes assisted her to explore weighty
matters of immigration, displacement and environmental degradation.
With subject matter like that, her images could have sent me away to slash my wrists but she
managed to imbue them with so much humour, quirkiness and ultimately humanity that I actually
felt a sense of hope for mankind.
There’s something remarkable about the humble lino print. The bits that are cut away or taken
away from the surface of the lino become the marks that are added to the surface of the paper
during the printing process. In the hands of creative people, those marks make unique meaning of
place and time.
In the best traditions of The Grand Tour my accidental discovery of that exhibition helped me to
enter the hearts, minds and souls of four of the local inhabitants of the Yarra Valley in a
memorable way. It doesn’t’ get any better than that.”
I could go on, with my imagined conversation regarding this absolute little gem of an exhibition
but coming back to reality, I urge you all to spend time with each and every work so that you too
can tell all and sundry about the quality of work of four very special artists presently being
exhibited at Art at Linden Gate in the Yarra Valley.
It is my very great pleasure to declare this exhibition, Incisive Visions, open.