Victoria McCaffrey

Linoprints

Exhibition Opens

Tuesday 23 April 2013, 5pm – 7pm

Exhibition Runs

23 April – 4 May 2013

fortyfivedownstairs 45 Flinders Lane Melbourne 

Victoria McCaffrey’s linocuts

I refer to German Expressionism in style but with a more positive slant in my works. There is a small narrative in each work for the artist and the invitation for the viewer to create their own.  I want to unpick the Australian mythology of landscape and replace it with my own. I want to become the signifier, generating my own cultural overlay.

 “Myths have agency to unite, divide, and exclude, sometimes simultaneously. Myths develop in stages marked by the confluence of two forces: the impregnation of a signifier with its signified and the cultural regeneration of this signification. Myth is perpetuated across generations through translation and sometimes transmutation. This process can be unconscious, conscious, or both. In all of these three cases, the moment that one culture or subculture (read: class) takes ownership of the myth, its course of regeneration is altered. Following this appropriation, the myth becomes universal within and exclusive to that constituency.” http://www.columbia.edu/itc/uwp/journal/2009/Kornman_E1.html 30/03/13

I do this in a selection of linocuts exploring my environment of regional Victoria. The imagery incorporated in the works celebrates the mundane and every day in a reserved fashion. The trees and the ships around regional Victoria capture my attention as I go about my daily business. The works are intentionally drawn from images I see from my car in recognition of the art of the everyday – the beauty of the less spectacular. I believe everything is interesting and whilst going on adventures to exotic locations is a great and exciting thing to do, there is beauty to what exists around me and that what I consider everyday others consider exotic.

Treesare the environment they exist in and my perceptions of them have become these images. They have been collected in the carrying out of other things – they reflect how ‘the everyday’ is anything but mundane. I have realised that my work reflects a serenity in it that is not apparent in me and I suspect that they project a longing for it

These trees are both tranquil and pervasive in their monochromatic representations, each image

becoming a personified character, from the nightmare tree at Stony Point to the dreamy and soft

foliage of Wangaratta.

I use Silk Cut lino for my prints and Awagami Japanese Kozo Natural tissue for the paper.

I find linocuts beautiful and expressive and remove the addiction to equipment that besets so

many printmakers.

An underlying theme in my artistic philosophy is the Law of Thermodynamics, in which all things atrophy (entropy). That nature overcomes all things returning them to their original form, that metal becomes rust and trees bow down to the wind.

I am represented by

• Salt Contemporary Art 55 Hesse St, Queenscliff
• Antipodes Gallery and Bookshop 138 Ocean Beach Rd. Sorrento
• Icon Frames 93 Waverley Rd, Malvern East.

Solo Show of Linocuts - Antipodes Bookshop an Gallery, September 2011 ,,,

Group Show , Seven Seas at Salt Contemporary Art in Queenscliff, February 2011. http://www.saltcontemporaryart.com/

Finalist in Silk Cut Lino Print Art Award 2011. 'Trees that live in the prevailing winds at Point Danger, Torquay.'

Best in Show award for Cape Shank from Bushrangers Bay watercolour at the 2010 Red Hill Show.