E.062 Excavation 1992; reworked 1996

• I. 1st state of 7, 1992

  Etching. An iron girder spans an excavation between two structures; at the far end of the excavation area is a bare wall. At the centre left, standing on the girder, is a person who is looking down. Behind the excavation rises a nineteenth-century rusticated building with large pilasters and with two windows visible. In the foreground, a stepped wall curves into the lower right corner, and in the middle distance, at the far right, is a palm tree. The composition is lightly etched but is essentially complete. There are three variant impressions of this state.

  1. Impression on wove Fabriano paper with watermark, printed by Rick Amor in his Dunmoochin studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘1 [circled]’; lower centre: ‘Excavation’; lower right: signed and dated ‘Rick Amor ’92’.
  2. Drier impression on wove Fabriano paper with watermark, printed by Rick Amor in his Dunmoochin studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘2 [circled]’; lower centre: ‘Excavation’; lower right: signed and dated ‘Rick Amor ’92’. Although inscribed ‘2’, this is an impression of the first state.
  3. Impression on wove Fabriano paper with watermark, printed by Rick Amor in his Dunmoochin studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘3 [circled]’; lower centre: ‘Excavation’; lower right: signed and dated ‘Rick Amor ’92’. Although inscribed ‘3’, this is an impression of the first state.

• I.a. 1st state of 7, 1992

  

  Etching. An iron girder spans an excavation between two structures; at the far end of the excavation area is a bare wall. At the centre left, standing on the girder, is a person who is looking down. Behind the excavation rises a nineteenth-century rusticated building with large pilasters and with two windows visible. In the foreground, a stepped wall curves into the lower right corner, and in the middle distance, at the far right, is a palm tree. The composition is lightly etched but is essentially complete. There are three variant impressions of this state.

• II. 2nd state of 7, 1992

  The plate has been re-etched. The masonry in the upper part of the image is now better defined, and the shadows at left, in the area beneath the girder, have been strengthened. The column nearest to the lower right has been burnished. Loosely etched lines have been added to the wall beneath the steps at the lower right, and there are additional lines of shading on the steps themselves. The light area beside the triangle of shadow at the centre of the plate has been burnished, and then etched with a few additional loose lines. There are two variant impressions of this state.

  1. Impression on wove Hahnemühle paper with watermark, printed by Rick Amor in his Dunmoochin studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘4 [circled]’; lower centre: ‘Excavation’; lower right: signed and dated ‘Rick Amor ’92’. Although inscribed ‘4’, this is an impression of the second state.
  2. Impression on wove Hahnemühle paper, printed by Rick Amor in his Dunmoochin studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘5 [circled]’; lower centre: ‘Excavation’; lower right: signed and dated ‘Rick Amor ’92’. Although inscribed ‘5’, this is an impression of the second state.

• III. 3rd state of 7, 1992

  

  Much etching has been added to the plate, in order to achieve greater, more dramatic, contrasts between light and dark and to clarify architectural details. Etched shading has been added to the sky in the upper right corner. The plate has been burnished in the upper left corner, in places of deep shadow at the left, and adjacent to the left vertical contour of the wall below the steps. Some oblique lines have been added to the wall of the steps.

  Impression with light plate tone, on wove Fabriano paper with watermark, printed by Rick Amor in his Dunmoochin studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘6 [circled]’; lower centre: ‘Excavation’; lower right: signed and dated ‘Rick Amor ’92’. Although inscribed ‘6’, this is the third state.

• IV. 4th state of 7, 1992

  

  Oblique strokes of drypoint have been added to the sky in the upper right corner. Strokes of vertical shading have been added to three strips of vertical shadow at the upper left. The left contour of the wall below the steps, together with that of the column above them, has been strengthened, and a horizontal line has been added along the bottom right edge of the steps. Some drypoint accents have been added above this.

  Impression on wove paper with a textured surface, printed by Rick Amor in his Dunmoochin studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘AP I’; lower centre: ‘Excavation’; lower right: signed and dated ‘Rick Amor ’92’.

• V. 5th state of 7, 1996

  More etched hatching – mainly vertical – has been added to many areas of the plate. Additional etching has given greater volume to the rusticated masonry and other architectural details. The vertical wall of the steps at the lower right has been defined with horizontal hatching. The figure at the upper left now merges into shadow, and the lower part of the structure at left has been burnished in places, so as to clarify its articulated forms. There are two variant impressions of this state.

  1. Impression on wove paper with a textured surface, printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘1 [circled]’; lower centre: ‘Excavation’; lower right: signed and dated ‘Rick Amor ’96’. Although inscribed ‘1’, this is an impression of the fifth state.
  2. Impression with plate tone, on wove paper with a textured surface, printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘2 [circled]’; lower centre: ‘Excavation’; lower right: signed and dated ‘Rick Amor ’96’. Although inscribed ‘2’, this is an impression of the fifth state.

• VI. 6th state of 7, 1996

  More burnishing has been applied in the upper left corner, and to the shadows at the lower left.

  Impression on wove paper with a textured surface, printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘3 [circled]’; lower centre: ‘Excavation’; lower right: signed and dated ‘Rick Amor ’96’. Although inscribed ‘3’, this is the sixth state.

• VII. 7th and final state, 1996 (Featured Image)

  

  The shadows below the girder, at the left and at the centre of the image, have been burnished to provide greater structural differentiation to the surfaces on which they fall.

  Impression on wove paper with a textured surface, printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘AP I’; lower centre: ‘Excavation’; lower right: signed and dated ‘Rick Amor ’96’.

• No edition

• Comment

  This etching makes use of a photograph taken by Amor in the area around Dight’s Mill, an industrial ruin on the Yarra River, in the inner Melbourne suburb of Abbotsford. The flour miller John Dight began building his brick mill on the Yarra in the late 1830s; operational by the early 1840s, Dight’s mill is said to be the first water-powered flour mill in the Port Phillip District, as the state of Victoria was then known. In the mid nineteenth century, the production of flour at the mill came to an end, and by the late 1860s the building had been abandoned. A new flour mill complex was built on its site in 1888; two decades later, in 1909, the various mill buildings were destroyed by fire.

  Amor’s photograph, which is not dated, is of the front of the mill ruins, overgrown with vegetation. In his etching, the ruins are recognizable by the iron girder and the space beneath it, as well as by the curving wall on the right. However, the actual scene is entirely transformed by its Piranesian architectural setting. The transformation is made explicit in an undated preparatory pencil drawing for the etching.

  The work that Amor did on E.062 in 1992 took the image to a dark grey tonality. When he returned to the print four years later, he did so to intensify its darkness, to emphasize the irregularities of the excavation of the bank at left, and to lighten the white area beneath the bridging girder. Yet, despite the clarifications of form, the etching retains a measure of spatial ambiguity.