E.116 The returning storm 1998; reworked 1999 and 2001

• I. 1st state of 5, 1998

  

  Etching. A great island monolith, its peak tilting left, looms close to shore. A man with an open umbrella runs diagonally leftwards along a low-lying pavement towards the choppy sea. The clouds in the left background are irregularly cross-hatched, while at the upper right, at the plate mark, dim light is created by lightly etched, near-horizontal parallel lines. There are four surviving variant impressions of this state. State proof 2/5 appears to have been destroyed by the artist.

  Four variable impressions on white, off-white and cream wove papers, printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. Each impression is inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘[2 through 5]/5’; lower centre: ‘Returning Storm’; lower right: signed and dated ‘Rick Amor 98’.

   

• II. 2nd state of 5, 1998

  The clouds at left have been selectively lightened with a burnisher. The hump on the rock at the upper right corner has been burnished to create a pointier shape and is now clearly back-lit; the corresponding area of light beside it has been made brighter. The pillar in the right foreground has been partly burnished, as has the pillar behind it. There are two variant impressions of this state.

  1. Impression with light grey plate tone, on cream wove Magnani paper with watermark, printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘1 [circled]’; lower centre: ‘Returning Storm’; lower right: signed and dated ‘Rick Amor 98’. Although inscribed ‘1’, this is an impression of the second state.
  2. Cleanly wiped impression on cream wove Magnani paper, printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘1/2 [circled]’; lower centre: ‘Returning Storm’; lower right: signed and dated ‘Rick Amor 98’.

• II.a. 2nd state of 5, 1998

  

  The clouds at left have been selectively lightened with a burnisher. The hump on the rock at the upper right corner has been burnished to create a pointier shape and is now clearly back-lit; the corresponding area of light beside it has been made brighter. The pillar in the right foreground has been partly burnished, as has the pillar behind it. There are two variant impressions of this state.

• III. 3rd state of 5, 1998

  More selective burnishing has been applied to the clouds at left, creating a distinct area of illumination. A strip of light has been burnished between the shadows of two concrete pillars at the right. There are three variant impressions of this state.

  1. Cleanly wiped impression on cream wove Magnani paper, printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘1/3 [circled]’; lower centre: ‘Returning Storm’; lower right: signed and dated ‘Rick Amor 98’.
  2. Impression with some plate tone, on cream wove Magnani paper with watermark, printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘2/3 [circled]’; lower centre: ‘Returning Storm’; lower right: signed and dated ‘Rick Amor 98’.
  3. Selectively wiped impression on cream wove Magnani paper, printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘3/3 [circled]’; lower centre: ‘Returning Storm’; lower right: signed and dated ‘Rick Amor 98’. In the wiping, ink has been left on the upper part of the rock and on the dark clouds at the right.

• First edition, 1998

  Nominal and variable edition of ten, but only four impressions were printed and numbered. These are on different kinds of wove paper and were printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. The edition included two artist’s proofs: AP II and AP III (AP I has not been sighted). Each impression is inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘[status of impression]’ [or] ‘[1 through 4]/10’; lower centre: ‘Returning Storm’; lower right: signed and dated ‘Rick Amor 98’.

  Edition sheet size: 265 x 400 mm

• Artist’s proof (part of first edition, 1998)

  

  More selective burnishing has been applied to the clouds at left, creating a distinct area of illumination. A strip of light has been burnished between the shadows of the two concrete pillars at right.

• IV. 4th state of 5, 1999

  The rock’s upper left peak has been burnished away, creating a more rounded appearance. The clouds at the left and upper right are burnished in places, especially at the left, to admit more light, thereby creating the appearance of strong illumination behind the rock. The rock itself has been selectively burnished so as to give it a more varied surface and a bulkier appearance. The shadowed planes of the two pillars at right have been made lighter and the central pavement has also been lightened, while the shadow cast by the closest pillar has been narrowed. The sea at the juncture of the upper left corner of the pavements and the water is burnished to create the appearance of a trough.

  Cleanly wiped impression on wove paper, printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘1 [circled]’; lower centre: ‘The Returning Storm’; lower right: signed and dated ‘Rick Amor 99’.

• Second edition, 1999

  The title is now The returning storm. A nominal and variable edition of ten, but only six impressions were printed and numbered. These are on wove BFK Rives and Arches papers with watermarks and were printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. The edition included a bon à tirer impression and an artist’s proof. Each impression is inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘[status of impression]’ [or] ‘[1 through 6]/10’; lower centre: ‘Returning Storm’; lower right: signed and dated ‘Rick Amor 99’.

  Edition sheet size: 285 x 378 mm

• Bon à tirer impression (second edition, 1999; impression of 4th state of 5)

  

  The rock’s upper left peak has been burnished away, creating a more rounded appearance. The clouds at the left and upper right are burnished in places, especially at the left, to admit more light, thereby creating the appearance of strong illumination behind the rock. The rock itself has been selectively burnished so as to give it a more varied surface and a bulkier appearance. The shadowed planes of the two pillars at right have been made lighter and the central pavement has also been lightened, while the shadow cast by the closest pillar has been narrowed. The sea at the juncture of the upper left corner of the pavements and the water is burnished to create the appearance of a trough.

• V. 5th and final state, 2001 (Featured Image)

  

  On 17–18 May 2001 Amor reworked the plate extensively with a burnisher. As a result, the morphology of the rock has become increasingly irregular, with several distinct peaks evident; its top is now shrouded in mist. Additional billows have been etched into the clouds at the left and the upper right. The front plane of the large pillar at right and the stumpy broken pillar at left are now considerably lighter. Scattered vertical hatching on the concrete pavement suggests reflections in a wet surface. Etched shading has been introduced to the row of facing rocks at the pavement’s end. The running man and his umbrella have been darkened.

  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: ‘The Returning Storm’; lower right: signed and dated ‘Rick Amor 01’.

• Third edition, 2001

  Edition of ten numbered impressions, on wove Magnani Acqueforti paper, printed by Martin King at the Australian Print Workshop, Fitzroy (Melbourne), in July 2001. The edition included 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 6]/10’; lower centre: ‘Returning Storm’ or ‘The Returning Storm’; lower right: signed and dated ‘Rick Amor 99’. APW chop mark: ‘APW [within rectangle]’ in lower right corner.

  Edition sheet size: 374 × 410 mm

• Comment

  The image in E.116 originated in an oil painting made in 1994, The visitor (The rock) (Lindsay 2005), whose subject Amor adapted, with important changes of detail, to the smaller, horizontal format of the etching plate. A significant difference between the oil and the print was the substitution in the latter of a running figure for the stationary figure in the painting.

  The huge monolith in the image reverberates with echoes of what, for Amor, are the ‘mythical’ Aran Islands, which lie off the west coast of Ireland, while also recalling Goya’s dark paintings and Arnold Böcklin’s depictions of the ‘Isle of the Dead’. The monolith is imagined, but the paved area is based on a section of the site in Melbourne’s CBD that was once occupied by the 1960s Gas and Fuel Buildings (demolished 1997), which stood where Federation Square stands today.

  The first edition of the print is closest to the 1994 painting, but the etching progressively diverged from its model until, following the third edition, of 2001, E.116 itself became the model for a new painting, Returning storm, 2001 (Fry 2008).

  The notion of some large, mysterious object or creature rising from the sea is deeply embedded in Amor’s psyche. A sense of unease and unreality is present in all three editions of this etching, but, as the morphology of the monolith changed through the print’s five states, and with it the weather, the island changed its character, seeming to grow in mystery and taking on a more otherworldly appearance. As indicated above, a crucial detail in the etching is the figure of the running man, whose reason for running cannot be known. His open umbrella, however, provides the grand scene with a curiously quotidian note.

  As with all of Amor’s etchings, the mood and emotional tenor of E.116 can vary dramatically from one impression to the next, depending on how the plate was inked and wiped.