E.151 Eroded landscape 2008

• I. 1st state of 4

  

  Etching. A giant mining scoop whose precise nature is difficult to determine, commands the space, blocking the view beyond. Below the scoop is stony rubble and in the right distance is a sliver of flat landscape. The subject is rendered with close cross-hatching, which has not printed clearly at the upper right and lower left, probably because the paper was too dry.

  Impression on wove paper, printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘1-1’; lower centre: ‘Eroded Landscape’; lower right: signed and dated ‘R Amor ’08’.

• II. 2nd state of 4

  

  Much new etching has been added throughout so as to clarify the definition of the scoop and its details, and to model it spatially. To this end, the areas just below and just above the curved arm of the scoop at the lower left have been burnished.

  Impression on wove Fabriano paper, printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘1-2’; lower centre: ‘Eroded Landscape’; lower right: signed and dated ‘R Amor 08’.

• III. 3rd state of 4

  The burnishing at the lower left has been extended to the rocks at the left and the right of the arm of the scoop, and to its frontally facing surfaces. There are three variant impressions of this state.

  1. Impression on wove Fabriano paper with watermark, printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘1-3’; lower centre: ‘Eroded Landscape’; lower right: signed and dated ‘R Amor 08’.
  2. Impression with light plate tone, on wove paper, printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘1-4’; lower centre: ‘Eroded Landscape’; lower right: signed and dated ‘R Amor 08’. Although inscribed ‘1-4’, this is an impression of the third state.
  3. Impression with light plate tone, on wove paper, printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘1-5’; lower centre: ‘Eroded Landscape’; lower right: signed and dated ‘R Amor 08’. Although inscribed ‘1-5’, this is an impression of the third state.

• IV. 4th and final state

  More fine burnishing has been applied to the highlighted curve of the scoop at the lower left, and to the rocks at the lower centre. There are two variant impressions of this state.

  1. Selectively wiped impression with plate tone in the lower half of the plate, on wove Arches paper, printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘AP I/II’; lower centre: ‘Eroded Landscape’; lower right: signed and dated ‘R Amor 08’.
  2. Cleanly wiped impression on wove Arches BFK Rives paper with watermark, printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘AP II/II’; lower centre: ‘Eroded Landscape’; lower right: signed and dated ‘R Amor 08’.

• Edition, 2008

  Edition of ten numbered impressions, on wove Velin Arches paper, printed by Rosalind Atkins at the Australian Print Workshop, Fitzroy (Melbourne), July 2008. The edition was uniformly printed with light plate tone. It included a bon à tirer impression, an artist’s proof and two APW workshop proofs. Each impression is inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘[status of impression]’ [or] ‘[1 through 10]/10’; lower centre: ‘Eroded Landscape’; lower right: signed and dated ‘R Amor 08’. Chop mark embossed in lower right corner: ‘APW [within horizontal rectangle]’.

  Edition sheet size: 383 x 483 mm

• Bon à tirer impression (edition, 2008; impression of 4th and final state)

  

  More fine burnishing has been applied to the highlighted curve of the scoop at the lower left, and to the rocks at the lower centre.

• Edition impression, 2008 (Featured Image)

  

• Comment

  This etching is based on an oil of the same title, painted in 2008 and exhibited in the same year at Niagara Galleries (Niagara Galleries 2008), but subsequently painted over.

  The dominant motif in E.151 has its source in a newspaper photograph of a mining scoop, but the scoop is depicted here in a way that makes it unrecognizable. It looms like a giant ruin, or a surreal monument from a science fiction movie. According to Amor, in the original photograph there was a man standing in the scoop, but in the print there is no human presence, just a weird sense of vast scale, and of something perversely blocking the view beyond.

  From its first state, the etching was closely hatched, and Amor had some difficulty in calibrating its tones with a burnisher, so as to imbue the object with the required spatial modelling. Nonetheless – or perhaps because of this – the work retains a disconcerting appearance that is in keeping with the artist’s love of creating strange things out of ordinary ones. The mining scoop, which causes erosion, has, in Amor’s depiction, been transformed into the eroded landscape itself.