E.168 Inner suburb 2012

• I. 1st state of 4

  

  Etching. A composite street view in a nineteenth-century inner suburb of Melbourne. In the right foreground is the corner of an old building and in the left middle ground is a shrub-covered embankment, which supports a railway bridge beneath which is a car. Beyond is a nineteenth-century tower and, in the middle, a distant view towards a modern rectangular building. Billowing clouds in the upper sky encircle the tower.

  Selectively wiped impression on cream wove Somerset paper, printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘1-1’; lower centre: ‘Inner Suburb’; lower right: signed and dated ‘R Amor ’12’.

• II. 2nd state of 4

  The addition of dark drypoint accents to many areas of the plate has introduced tonal modulation and enhanced the sense of volume and space. Deep shadows have been added to the building at right. The outlines of the bridge and car have been strengthened, as have the architectural details of the tower. Drypoint has been added to the raised bank at left, but the retaining wall has been burnished, as has the long shadow cast by the corner building. Several horizontal lines have been added to the road at the lower left, while the sky at the upper centre has also been darkened. There are two variant impressions of this state.

  1. Selectively wiped impression on cream wove Somerset paper, printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘1-2’; lower centre: ‘Inner Suburb’; lower right: signed and dated ‘R Amor ’12’.
  2. Selectively wiped impression on cream wove Somerset paper, printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘1-3’; lower centre: ‘Inner Suburb’; lower right: signed and dated ‘R Amor ’12’. Although inscribed ‘1-3’, this is an impression of the second state.

• II.a. 2nd state of 4

  

  The addition of dark drypoint accents to many areas of the plate has introduced tonal modulation and enhanced the sense of volume and space. Deep shadows have been added to the building at right. The outlines of the bridge and car have been strengthened, as have the architectural details of the tower. Drypoint has been added to the raised bank at left, but the retaining wall has been burnished, as has the long shadow cast by the corner building. Several horizontal lines have been added to the road at the lower left, while the sky at the upper centre has also been darkened. There are two variant impressions of this state.

• III. 3rd state of 4

  Many areas of the plate have been lightly burnished in order to introduce more intermediate tones of grey. At the same time, definition has been added with fine etching: on the retaining wall at left, on the bridge, on the corner building and its shadow, and in the clouds. There are two variant impressions of this state.

  1. Impression on wove Hahnemühle paper, printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘1-4’; lower centre: ‘Inner Suburb’; lower right: signed and dated ‘R Amor ’12’. Although inscribed ‘1-4’, this is an impression of the third state.
  2. Impression with plate tone, on cream wove Somerset paper, printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘2-4’; lower centre: ‘Inner Suburb’; lower right: signed and dated ‘R Amor ’12’. Although inscribed ‘2-4’, this is an impression of the third state.

• IV. 4th and final state

  Drypoint has been added along the far right edge of the building at right.

  Impression on wove paper, printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘AP’; lower centre: ‘Inner Suburb’; lower right: signed and dated ‘R Amor ’12’.

• Edition, 2012

  Edition of ten numbered impressions, printed by Rosalind Atkins at Kate Herd’s studio, Alphington. The edition was uniformly printed with plate tone and selectively wiped. It included an artist’s proof, a printer’s proof and an hors commerce impression. Each impression is inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘[status of impression]’ [or] ‘[1 through 10]/10’; lower centre: ‘Inner Suburb’; lower right: signed and dated ‘R Amor ’12’.

• Edition impression, 2012 (Featured Image)

  

  Drypoint has been added along the far right edge of the building at right.

• Comment

  This is a composite view of various streets and buildings in Melbourne’s inner suburbs and includes the mansard tower located near the corner of Wellington and Langridge Streets, Collingwood. The print was made after an oil of the same title, painted in February 2007; both works are oriented in the same direction and E.168 is very close to the painting in its distribution of light and dark areas, especially in the sky with its wheeling clouds around the tower. The development of the image through its four states addressed this matter of tonal equivalence, as did the wiping of the plate.

  The etching resulted from a provocation issued by the writer and publisher Lou Klepac, who challenged Amor to make a miniature etching of a streetscape.

  A variant of the subject of this print appeared in a painting from 2013, also titled Inner suburb, which was exhibited in 2014 at Philip Bacon Galleries, Brisbane (Philip Bacon Galleries 2014).