MCA Collection: Artists in Focus
Shaun Gladwell
MCA

Estab­lished by the Aus­tralian Print Work­shop (APW), the Aus­tralian Print Work­shop Artist Fel­low­ship pro­gram is the most sig­nif­i­cant of its kind in Aus­tralia and was award­ed annu­al­ly between 2017 and 2021. The Fel­low­ship enabled a num­ber of lead­ing Aus­tralian artists to research, devel­op and cre­ate a new body of work in the print medium.

Shaun Glad­well was award­ed the fel­low­ship in 2019.

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In a recent video inter­view you men­tioned that the 2019 fel­low­ship was the third time you worked at the Aus­tralian Print Work­shop (APW). What was the first body of work you made there? Was the print Alle­gor­i­cal Study/​Riding with Death, 2007 part of it?

In the moment, I for­got how many times and just said three. Three for­mal invi­ta­tions per­haps? I’m often on the APW doorstep with sin­gu­lar print projects in mind.

If we are begin­ning at the very start, then I think I approached ear­ly etch­ings and lith­o­g­ra­phy pri­mar­i­ly from a draw­ing prac­tice and focused on mono­chro­mat­ic process­es to focus. More recent projects exper­i­ment with mul­ti-plate and colour process­es as well as col­lage and mon­tage, how­ev­er draw­ing remains foun­da­tion­al throughout. 

Rid­ing with Death was made at the very begin­ning of my rela­tion­ship with the APW. The key image ref­er­ence was Leonar­do da Vinci’s alle­gor­i­cal study of a human rid­ing the skele­ton of a horse, itself skele­tal — an image heav­i­ly rein­ter­pret­ed over time. I ini­tial­ly relat­ed to the image and con­cept of rid­ing as a phys­i­cal act and expe­ri­ence. I’m a keen but infre­quent rid­er of hors­es, motor­cy­cles, bicy­cles, skate­boards, snow­boards, surf­boards, etc. Rid­ing as a sport or recre­ation or dance is in pro­por­tion to its risk, of falling. The ride inher­ent­ly signal’s the dan­ger to those rid­ing or for all if the ride is sym­bol­ic of life. The orig­i­nal da Vin­ci com­po­si­tion offered ele­ments of Van­i­tas and Memen­to Mori to explore further. 

Ear­ly print projects engaged art his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ences and the ​‘insti­tu­tion of print­mak­ing’, its own his­to­ry, tra­di­tions and con­ven­tions. Let­ting lith­o­graph­ic tusche wash out­side the paper and plate frames was also to acknowl­edge the pow­er of these very same fram­ing con­ven­tions. Titling, for­mat­ting, and sequenc­ing through fron­tispiece and colophon/​index were also impor­tant para-tex­tu­al fea­tures of these ear­ly projects.

With any men­tion of Euro­pean artists I need to clear­ly state the impor­tance of Aus­tralian print­mak­ers and their influ­ence upon me. At the time of pro­cess­ing these lith­o­graph­ic and etch­ing plates, I was research­ing the work of Lau­rel Nan­nup, a senior and respect­ed Noon­gar artist. Lau­rel is well known for her pub­lic sculp­ture First Con­tact (2016), the sin­gu­lar most impor­tant pub­lic sculp­ture in Aus­tralia, and far beyond, in my hum­ble opin­ion. Lau­rel is also an incred­i­ble print­mak­er (trav­el­ing to and pro­duc­ing very pow­er­ful yet del­i­cate scenes of New York City).

In 2014 you were award­ed the APW Col­lie Print Trust Print­mak­ing Fel­low­ship, and you worked there at the same time as chore­o­graph­ing the dance piece Dead Flag Blues for the 2014 Keir Chore­o­graph­ic Award at Dance­house, Mel­bourne; how did these two projects influ­ence each other?

How does the phys­i­cal process of work­ing at APW and col­lab­o­rat­ing with the print­ers con­nect to your expe­ri­ences of per­form­ing and choreographing?

Like so many oth­er col­lab­o­ra­tive process­es, I do think print­mak­ing itself can be read as a coor­di­nat­ed loco­mo­tion of bod­ies, mate­ri­als, hard­ware, and chem­istry. If this process is viewed either as alchem­i­cal and inef­fa­ble or coor­di­nat­ed cre­ative labour and mate­ri­als, there is a col­lab­o­ra­tive chore­og­ra­phy tak­ing place that makes print­mak­ing — or my expe­ri­ence of it at least — entire­ly com­men­su­rable to oth­er for­mal or non-insti­tu­tion­al move­ment languages. 

Con­cep­tu­al rela­tion­ships and coor­di­nates well beyond the opti­cal image and frame nev­er over­ride the tac­tile, phys­i­cal prop­er­ties of print­mak­ing for me. The fetishism and objec­tophillia with­in tra­di­tion­al mate­ri­als and process­es are them­selves a self-reflex­ive sub­ject mat­ter. The print­ed image is a com­plex of reac­tions, pres­sures, and lay­ers almost geo­log­i­cal in for­ma­tion. I am also imag­in­ing sub­cu­ta­neous ink maps with­in in the paper flesh/​fibre. With­in these dif­fer­ing coor­di­nates, the print­ing process is shaped as a reti­nal and con­cep­tu­al but also equal­ly phys­i­cal, locat­able, and rela­tion­al. I con­sid­er Brett Whitley’s ​“My rela­tion­ship between screen-print­ing and Regen­t’s Park Zoo” from 1965 to be a good exam­ple of this free-play of ele­ments and mate­ri­als (whilst also offer­ing the title as a an open ques­tion, man­date or char­ter for itself). 

At the time of print­ing, cross coun­try and trail run­ning informed my cre­ative prac­tice. Most­ly run­ning known tracks, re-estab­lish­ing old ones whilst get­ting lost, cold, hun­gry, and frus­trat­ed try­ing to find or cre­ate new tracks.

In 2014, I was work­ing with col­leagues based in per­for­mance and chore­og­ra­phy on a group devised pre­sen­ta­tion. We explored mil­i­taris­tic con­trol and the cal­i­bra­tion of bod­ies through­out con­tem­po­rary con­flict, result­ing in the per­for­mance Dead Flag Blues. Pre-record­ed and live music was a key ele­ment in devel­op­ment and per­for­mance. I also worked with sim­i­lar music through­out and found the death and speed met­al sub-gen­res of heavy met­al music to be the most inter­est­ing. The print edi­tion Sea­sons in the Abyss (2014) appro­pri­ates the title from the fifth stu­dio album by Amer­i­can met­al band Slay­er. Apart from wish­ing to analyse the con­struct of heavy met­al an approx­i­ma­tion in son­ic vio­lence to war­fare, I also want­ed to con­sid­er the poet­ic force of the album title detached from its music, whilst also acknowl­edg­ing the hor­ror-real­i­ty of son­ic based weapon­ry. Sound could now have lethal effect on live tar­gets. This aur­al, son­ic aggres­sion was then com­pressed into fig­u­ra­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tions through a regard for tech­niques spe­cif­ic to lith­o­g­ra­phy. A veloc­i­ty with­in draw­ing was need­ed but the scal­ing and removal from the force of the sub­ject mat­ter is now, of course, an enor­mous com­pro­mise. Quick­ly the con­cerns become that of lith­o­g­ra­phy as a process, oscil­lat­ing between fig­u­ra­tive con­trol and the medium’s abil­i­ty to describe its own physics. Less descrip­tive forms and semi-con­trol­lable effects were explored after ini­tial fig­u­ra­tive draw­ing. Topo­graph­i­cal view of boil­ing sur­faces — scorched earth and skin — dis/​appeared in tech­niques such as the watery peau de cra­paud. This was large­ly an attempt to ride with, rather than ful­ly con­trol. Open grav­i­ta­tion­al pool­ing and drip­ping also seemed index­i­cal to son­ic, spa­tial dis­tor­tion and feed­back but this sig­ni­fi­ca­tion, or claim, again, can nev­er approach the sub­ject, which will remain unrepresentable. 

I was also very inter­est­ed in drawing’s from Käthe Koll­witz instill­ing hor­ror and despair, mourn­ing and ten­der­ness in the same com­po­si­tion. Also, Bar­bara Hepworth’s Hos­pi­tal Draw­ings as exem­plars of har­mo­nious and com­plex com­po­si­tions of del­i­cate human sur­gi­cal col­lab­o­ra­tions. I was tak­ing these art his­tor­i­cal exam­ples into dance as well as print­ing. Bod­ies and images were asked to reflect on the great forces exert­ed upon and exud­ed from indi­vid­u­als, how­ev­er sub­tle or gross, with­in the emer­gency of geo-polit­i­cal con­flict. A cri­tique of con­trol and vio­lence through print­mak­ing and danc­ing hap­pened simul­ta­ne­ous­ly and this was a per­son­al­ly unknown yet his­tor­i­cal­ly loaded pas de deux. 

Your most recent prints at APW were cre­at­ed in 2019 as part of their Artist Fel­low­ship pro­gram. It gave you a chance to cre­ate a set of pho­tolith­o­graphs with drawn ele­ments, what drew you to explore this print­ing process.

The sequenc­ing of these works was impor­tant with­in the recent fel­low­ship work-peri­od. Pho­tolith­o­graphs were pro­duced first and began as loca­tion stud­ies, name­ly, the streets imme­di­ate­ly sur­round­ing the APW. It was impor­tant to begin with an inves­ti­ga­tion of the local as the imme­di­ate phys­i­cal and aes­thet­ic locus. 

Graph­ic ele­ments of these prints were overt­ly sourced from the neigh­bour­hood. Street signs, postal box­es, street art and vehi­cles were first­ly pho­tographed then print­ed and drawn upon. Pho­to­graph­ic ele­ments were localised and iden­ti­fi­able through graffiti/​street art whilst oth­er ele­ments were intro­duced from vast­ly dif­fer­ent sources. A Fitzroy park­ing sign was absurd­ly jux­ta­posed with an invert­ed dia­gram of the Neo-Sumer­ian Zig­gu­rat of Ur. Draw­ing became a way of nav­i­gat­ing through and with­in a com­po­si­tion of var­i­ous image time-spaces. There was an imme­di­a­cy and speed to these draw­ings but only after exten­sive prepara­to­ry stud­ies, all on ubiq­ui­tous A4 office paper, which for me is also the DIY inde­pen­dent zine aes­thet­ic. I also hold a great respect for the impor­tance of the pho­to­copi­er as an immense­ly impor­tant print­mak­ing tool.

Sten­cilling, wheat past­ing, lith­o­g­ra­phy, pho­to­copy­ing, etc, have con­sti­tut­ed the aes­thet­ic of the mod­ern street and shaped its pol­i­tics. Mass polit­i­cal, com­mer­cial, and artis­tic mes­sage craft was first pos­si­ble in print and the street is its tra­di­tion­al stage. It was impor­tant for me to reflect upon this his­to­ry dur­ing the pro­cess­ing of these first plates. 

In the lith­o­graphs you play with lan­guage and jux­ta­pose Greek and Latin ref­er­ences with pho­tographs from the urban envi­ron­ment, like of street signs. Some of these ele­ments seem quite tongue in cheek. I’m curi­ous how you feel about the role of humour in your practice?

I was imag­in­ing a kind of ter­ri­to­r­i­al graf­fi­ti crew relat­ed dis­pute between two com­pet­ing sys­tems, which was the case for Greek and Latin at one point in his­to­ry, and for this con­flict to play out a few mil­len­nia out of time. Some images and sig­nage were just ask­ing for it. One vehi­cle from the Abbots­ford based removal­ist com­pa­ny ​‘Man with a Van’ seemed ripe to be over­drawn with the image Vit­ru­vian woman. This and some of the text felt like pro­pos­als for graf­fi­ti and that made the draw­ing process ludic and fun. 

I was also think­ing of the Wap­ping dis­pute and decline of the British labour unions in Jan­u­ary 1986 when Rupert Murdoch’s UK based press process was mod­ernised, thus dis­plac­ing the hot met­al lino­type mechan­i­cal type­set­ting labour force, result­ing in a major union strikes. I have very much want­ed to stage this dis­pute with­in the actu­al print­ing process­es jux­ta­posed with­in a print folio. The lino­type would oppose the pho­to­type­set­ting and then dig­i­tal print­ing tech­niques. As soon as dig­i­tal sources enter ear­li­er print­ing process­es, I think of the social con­flict and wealth dis­par­i­ty cre­at­ed with mod­erni­sa­tion and would take inter­est in the pos­si­bil­i­ty of tech­niques to call upon these pol­i­tics. I was hop­ing to make these works but end­ed up mak­ing the ones you are describ­ing above but I failed with regards to the spe­cif­ic process­es. There is some­thing trag­ic and hilar­i­ous when rehears­ing his­to­ry in the present. I’m cur­rent­ly at home try­ing to keep a glob­al optic and was think­ing of Dio­genes prac­tic­ing cos­mopoli­tanism from home 2300 years ago! 

Van­i­tas and memen­to mori paint­ing seem to be an endur­ing ref­er­ence point for you in works that span across all media – what inter­ests you about these his­toric gen­res, the sym­bol­ism of the skull and top­ic of mortality?

The punc­tum for Van­i­tas is a reminder of death how­ev­er the studi­um can offer an affir­ma­tion of life’s impor­tance — oth­er is often also sig­ni­fied. A van­i­tas or empti­ness func­tions as an emo­tion­al or psy­cho­log­i­cal ambi­gram oscil­lat­ing between a con­fir­ma­tion of the real­i­ty of death from the posi­tion of the liv­ing. Death reck­on­ing some­how becomes life affirm­ing. Print­mak­ing is a repro­duc­tive life-death-life cycle. The etch­ing press hav­ing rough­ly a bicy­cle sized wheel. Reduc­tio ad absur­dum is think­ing of etch­ing (at least), as a form of cycling and rid­ing with death. 

Can you describe how you used the 360-degree cam­era in the cre­ation of Skulls ​“R” Us 1 – 3? Do you feel it’s impor­tant for the view­er to be aware of the tech­nolo­gies you used? I also just want­ed to dou­ble check that you didn’t use VR to make these prints, but were work­ing on VR projects at the same time?

I con­sid­er print­mak­ing a form per­son­al steganog­ra­phy that can erase, obscure, and con­ceal as much as define and describe. Trans­for­ma­tions with­in images and across dif­fer­ent states (n)either abbre­vi­ate (n)or elab­o­rate upon forms and con­cepts. The process is para­dox­i­cal in reveal­ing the veil­ing of images and vice versa. 

Skulls ​“R” Us was arrived at through an inter­est in record­ing and reflect­ing on process as much as work­ing towards a tele­o­log­i­cal end print or final state. The press in all forms and expan­sive iter­a­tions was approached in rela­tion to ideas around trans­paren­cy. Assange’s ​‘Sci­en­tif­ic Jour­nal­ism’ could be applied to the print­mak­ing process. It asks jour­nal­ism to offer ALL sources in par­i­ty with research on physics which requires all exper­i­men­tal data to be pub­lished. Print­mak­ing was already struc­tural­ly capa­ble of this trans­paren­cy when offer­ing for­mer states, Bön a Tir­er, and studies.

Prepara­to­ry works lead­ing up to Skulls ​“R” Us depict two human skulls in pro­file. They mir­ror each oth­er rather than see each oth­er, due to the fact that they are just a visu­al descrip­tion of forms (human skulls) that can no longer see (either as prints or rep­re­sent­ed skulls). Of inter­est was an image that would mir­ror itself like the mir­ror­ing with in the mechan­i­cal and pho­to­me­chan­i­cal print­ing process. The high­ly reflec­tive pol­ished cop­per of the etch­ing plate before being processed was already a reflect­ing mir­ror. The mimet­ic reflec­tive func­tion in print­ing was then asso­ci­at­ed with the tem­po­ral and spa­tial mime­sis nec­es­sary for an under­stat­ing (car­nal log­ic) of extend­ed reality. 

What inspired you to make the set of etch­ings Surfer Funer­al for Lib­er­ty 1 – 3 cen­tered on the stat­ue of lib­er­ty? I read that you worked on a VR com­mis­sion for The Water­mill Cen­ter, New York, in the same year titled Lib­er­tas Van­i­tas, how do these works connect?

I’m very excit­ed to be show­ing Lib­er­tas Van­i­tas soon. It will be includ­ed in a lit­tle XR space pro­vi­sion­al­ly titled A Guide to Recent Metaver­sal Archi­tec­ture. This title will soon sure­ly be out­dat­ed, like the lino­type hav­ing to give way to new­er print­ing technology. 

Surfer Funer­al for Lib­er­ty and con­se­quent­ly Lib­er­tas Van­i­tas reflect­ed my inter­est in iconog­ra­phy that was emblem­at­ic of entire philo­soph­i­cal, polit­i­cal, and social sys­tems. Barthol­di and Eiffel’s Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty (Lib­er­ty Enlight­en­ing the world)) is a neo­clas­si­cal sculp­ture that pro­duces this lev­el of icon pow­er. Its forms become a com­pres­sion to a field so com­plex that this short­hand and sim­pli­fi­ca­tion is also the icon’s fail­ure. I want­ed to rethink this high­ly recog­nis­able form through the invert­ed imagery of a surfer’s funer­al — also known as a pad­dle out cer­e­mo­ny. The surf­boards were posi­tioned to sub­sti­tute Lady Liberty’s tiara rays, which itself is based on Themis, the Ancient Greek Titaness rep­re­sent­ing good council. 

This etch­ing was pro­duced in the spir­it of exper­i­men­ta­tion. The roll over process abstract­ed and trans­formed the fig­u­ra­tive ele­ments into the aes­thet­ic of a robot from Fritz Lang’s 1927 film Metrop­o­lis or the lat­ter C‑3PO droid from the Star Wars film series. Lib­er­ty regard­ing the actu­al effects of Impe­ri­al­ism appeared to be a polit­i­cal fic­tion in need of a funeral. 

The lines in the etch­ings ØNE and TWØ remind me of staves in musi­cal nota­tion – there is a real sense of rhythm and move­ment in these prints, could you tell me a bit about the ideas behind them? In addi­tion to art his­to­ry, are there oth­er sources of inspi­ra­tion you draw on, like music?

In terms of the spe­cif­ic sty­lus, I think it was a wire comb — one of the many styli donat­ed to the APW by artists that pro­duced a stave-like-effect. To rec­i­p­ro­cate, I think I left a set of den­tal tools (new and unused of course) in the tool box. I’m also an admir­er of Jim Dine’s self-reflex­ive tool prints on this sub­ject mat­ter BTW.

Over the course of the entire out­put of prints there is a con­ver­sa­tion both with the artists and tech­ni­cians cen­tral to the print­ing process but there is an inter­nal con­ver­sa­tion or dia­logue across the sep­a­rate indi­vid­ual prints. I first set this idea into the lith­o­graphs with ref­er­ences to Fibonac­ci and com­pet­ing Ara­bic numer­als or dig­its against roman numer­al forms — Fibonac­ci is the syn­the­sis­er here with his engage­ment of Ara­bic numerals/​digits. Extend­ing their poten­tial to mea­sure and mod­el. This con­cept then trans­mi­grat­ed from the lith­o­graphs to a kind of visu­al com­po­si­tion­al metonymy in these final etch­ings, which take the loose over­all form of the indi­vid­ual dig­its ​‘1’ and ​‘2’. Con­cepts such as synaes­the­sia and aleatoric sound are of great inter­est to me, how­ev­er this work was con­cerned with nota­tion and numer­a­tion emerging/​disappearing into/​from their larg­er systems. 

You com­pared the trans­for­ma­tion of images through the var­i­ous states of print­ing (as vis­i­ble for exam­ple in Surfer Funer­al for Lib­er­ty 1 – 3) to the mul­ti­ple frames in mov­ing image media. Could you elab­o­rate on this, and how/​if your exper­i­men­ta­tions with XR have influ­enced how you think about fram­ing and orga­ni­za­tion of space in your printmaking?

Import­ing and trans­lat­ing images and ideas into Alberti’s win­dow via print­mak­ing allows the export­ing of aes­thet­ic and con­cep­tu­al mate­r­i­al to oth­er media. Each image can be seen as part of a sequence where ideas, as much as the image, can trans­form. This sequenc­ing is not nec­es­sar­i­ly lin­ear or chronological. 

In my recent prints, images are offered in a pairs or groups, and this is com­pat­i­ble with new dig­i­tal media: images are not sin­gu­lar but mul­ti­far­i­ous and pol­y­se­mous. Print­ing clear­ly trans­lat­ed into the sav­ing and archiv­ing of dif­fer­ent beta ver­sions of an XR envi­ron­ment or lay­ers in pho­to­shop. Both print­mak­ing and XR offer an ini­tial the­sis, only to then be ques­tioned via antithe­sis and final­ly organ­ised into a syn­the­sis — often, all in the same folio or codex. 

You men­tioned that you are inter­est­ed in con­vey­ing ​“print­mak­ing as an envi­ron­ment and unfold­ing con­ver­sa­tion” – could you talk about this in rela­tion­ship to your expe­ri­ences col­lab­o­rat­ing with the print­ers at APW?

The panop­ti­cal 360 cam­era framed not only the plate but the entire space in which the print was pro­duced, and this was sig­nif­i­cant when review­ing and analysing mate­r­i­al. The per­spec­tive was from the plate as a sur­face and field. I once thought these spher­i­cal and inclu­sive optics pre­sent­ed the dis­so­lu­tion of the Albert­ian frame, but this was pos­si­bly a case explained by Amara’s law, which sug­gests we tend to over­es­ti­mate the short-term impacts of tech­nol­o­gy and under­es­ti­mate the long-term effects. I now realise XR is just anoth­er type of fram­ing device.

– Shaun Glad­well inter­viewed by Katha­ri­na Prug­ger, Cura­tor, Nation­al Gallery of Vic­to­ria, 10^th Sep­tem­ber 2021