Biography

With a background in fine arts, printmaking, museum planning and education, Juliana O’Dean’s interest as a contemporary artist lies in examining nature’s dynamic relationships through research based practice. A focus on the significance of terrain, ground and geology in defining place, and human relationships with place, underpins her conceptual approach. Influenced by interpretative processes employed in creating exhibitions about natural environments, she works across a range of artistic disciplines. She believes that the contemporary imaging of nature by artists is occurring at a critical juncture in man’s presence on the planet and that the act of recording allows the artist and viewer the possibility of reappraisal and re-valuing.

Illustrated Talk

Ancient Earth, Fresh Ground:
A Contemporary Exploration of Terrain through the Printed Mark
The poet Les Murray and I are descended from Gaelic speaking Scottish families who arrived in Australia between the 1820’s and 1840’s. Sailing from Scotland ‘to the ends of the earth’, they landed at the colony of Sydney and subsequently settled in the Manning River Valley, a subtropical coastal region to the north. Here they bought land, hand-cleared dense timber and rainforest to establish farms and significantly changed the environment they initially encountered.

Our work has come together in a project comprising a rare edition book of hand set poetry and printed images, and an exhibition of two- and three- dimensional artworks. These artistic and literary works articulate the landscape of the Manning Valley and contrasting arid zone landscapes we have encountered, 170 years on. Based on personal explorations and observations of these sites, we seek to re-present our contemporary experiences, recorded through poetry, images and objects.

My approach as an artist focuses on the significance of terrain, ground and geology in defining place and human relationships with place. The poems of Les Murray that I have chosen elucidate his connection to natural environment and place, through, as J.M Coetzee states, ‘an acute sensitivity to sensory impressions and an extraordinary capacity to articulate them.’ (Refer to Footnote included in my original abstract)

This paper will examine the centrality of print to the project, as a hybrid and flexible medium appropriate to contemporary, creative mapping of landscape and our connection to it. I will discuss the range of printing methodologies and applications that occur within the project and their development out of its conceptual structure. Poems hand set in Ludlow type, cast 3D imprints, hand printed photogravures, etching, carborundum and monoprinting, scientific computer printouts and discarded printed material formed into objects constitute examples of print employed in multiples and unique states that convey Les Murray’s and my complex relationships to personally significant landscapes.