Rick Amor

An Online Catalogue Raisonné of the Prints by Irena Zdanowicz

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  • The returning storm

The returning storm 1998; reworked 1999 and 2001

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I. 1st state of 5, 1998

II.a. 2nd state of 5, 1998

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

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

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

Close the overlay

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Catalogue Number
E.116
Title and Date
The returning storm

1998; reworked 1999 and 2001

Description of Featured Image
A great monolith looms close to shore as a storm encroaches, while a man holding an umbrella runs along a pavement towards the choppy sea.
Medium Category and Technique
Intaglio Print: Etching and burnishing on copper
Support
Wove paper. Identified papers: Saunders Waterford paper with watermark: ‘SAUNDERS WATERFORD’; Magnani Acqueforti paper with watermark: Romanesque ‘M’ with cross above; BFK Rives paper; Arches 88 paper with watermark: ‘ARCHES 88 / FRANCE’ with infinity symbol.
Dimensions
Image size: 215 x 324 mm
Matrix size: 225 x 329 mm
Artist’s Record Number
RAE.128 (1998), RAE.134 (1999), RAE.138 (2001)
Printer(s) and Workshop(s)
All state impressions, and first and second editions, printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. Third edition printed by Martin King at the Australian Print Workshop, Fitzroy (Melbourne).
Summary Edition Information
Five states. Three editions. First edition: nominal edition of ten, but only four impressions printed and numbered, 1998. Second edition: nominal edition of ten, but only six impressions printed and numbered, 1999. Third edition: edition of ten numbered impressions, 2001.
Exhibitions
Niagara Galleries 1999: Niagara Galleries, Richmond (Melbourne), Rick Amor Sculpture, 2–27 March 1999, no. 2, ed. 1/10, 1998.
National Gallery of Australia 2004: National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Place Made: Australian Print Workshop, 31 January – 11 April 2004 [catalogue not numbered], APW workshop proof 2/2, 2001.
Heide MoMA 2008: Heide Museum of Modern Art, Bulleen (Melbourne), Rick Amor: A Single Mind, 22 March – 13 July 2008, Prints no. 11, ed. 6/10, 2001.
Australian Print Workshop 2014: Australian Print Workshop, Fitzroy (Melbourne), APW George Collie Memorial Award Exhibition: Rick Amor + Noel Counihan, 30 August – 4 October 2014, no. 10 (as not for sale).
Literature
For an illustration of the painting The visitor (The rock), 1994, see Robert Lindsay, Rick Amor: Standing in the Shadows (exh. cat.), McClelland Gallery and Sculpture Park, Langwarrin, Victoria, 2005, cat. no. 37, p. 49.
Gavin Fry, Rick Amor, Beagle Press, Roseville, NSW, 2008, AP, 1999, p. 206 (where the date in the caption is incorrectly given as 1998). For an illustration of the painting Returning storm, 2001, see p. 125.
Linda Short (ed.), Rick Amor: A Single Mind (exh. cat.), Heide Museum of Modern Art, Bulleen, Victoria, 2008, cat. no. 11, ed. 6/10, 2001, illus. p. 122.
Bridget Macleod, ‘Rick Amor [interview]’, Artist Profile, no. 39, 2017, p. 82, pl. 05 (2001).
Collections
State Library of Victoria, Melbourne: nine state impressions, numbered 1, 1/3 through 3/3, 1/2, 2/5 through 5/5, all dated 1998; AP III, dated 1998; ed. 3/10, dated 1998; bon à tirer impression, dated 1999; one state impression, numbered 1-1, dated 2001.
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide: ed. 7/10, dated 2001 (20155G153).
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra: ed. 4/10, dated 1998 (2007.666); ed. 2/10, with plate tone, dated 1999 (2007.355); APW workshop proof 2/2, dated 2001 (2002.431.846).
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne: ed. 10/10, dated 2001 (2012.415).
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.

Keywords
Running man, Sea, Storm
URL
https://catalogue.rickamor.com.au/works/intaglio/the-returning-storm/

Record last updated 16/02/2021
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