Description
Te Wahipounamu 2024
FINALIST EPP Castlemaine Art Museum 2026 [Experimental Print Prize]
Photomontage screen print, acrylic on Fabriano Rosaspina printmaking paper 285gsm, 50 x 70cm
Te Wãhipounamu is a world heritage area on the west coast of NZ’s South Island. The alpine mountains and high-country sheep farms have been regularly showered with broad-spectrum pesticides for 70 years, over which time native birdlife has gone from profuse to endangered.
The background detail is from an intaglio etching of Mt Aspiring 1888. The helicopter, taken from a trade catalogue, is attached to a large bucket filled with cereal baits. This is the technology used to dispense pesticide – an A1 hazardous substance, over the remote alpine region. New Zealand and Australia are unique in that they are the only country’s in the world that allow aerial baiting of wildlife across their mainlands – initially this was to protect livestock, but more recently aerial baiting has been redeployed as a “conservation” tool. There is so much support for the use of chemical pesticides that it is difficult to publish anything about the dangers of this technology.
The background text is an article that I wrote for The Conversation online news source, on pesticide use in NZ in 2023. Approved for publication by my University and the English editors, the NZ Conversation refused to print it. In retaliation I put the essay to screen.
The photomontage of Te Wãhipounamu was constructed in photoshop then separated into four tonal ranges with each layer converted to
bitmap (dots). These were then printed onto large sheets of very thin (65 gsm) photocopy paper and transferred onto screens in the darkroom, shooting light though the paper using highly sensitive photographic emulsion and long exposure light units. The screens were then printed with a mix of pearlescent inks and Daley Rowney Systems 3 acrylics. This work was completed at Birmingham Printmakers Studio in the UK, I have been unable to replicate the process in Australia.
Edition 0f 8 [5 available]
