Swamp Dynamics

The Printmaker's Plate

Bronwyn Wright 1999

While studying at NTU I majored in printmaking. I made small woodcuts & linocuts, drypoints, etchings, aquatints, sugarlifts and lithographs. Over two years materials such as lino, zincplate, wood, copperplate, perspex and stone were explored using a variety of inks. I tore up heavy rectangles of paper and soaked them in water and I' printed on Magnani, Hahnimule and BFK. On stone and plate I used photocopies and photographic processes and I scratched back into the surfaces reworking and revitalising the images. Acquiring skills and making prints in air conditioned rooms at Uni was my main daytime activity over several years. But then as now, in the late afternoons and early evening , I walk out into the land. This is the important part of the day. There in the wasteland on the edge of town, I walk, observe and take part in the landscape.

Landscape ? - 'scape' is a view but its not just a view that I'm referring to. My experience of the land includes views and viewpoints. I often stand on a rise or a hill viewing the lay of the land the energy of the sky. But my experience involves walking within the land whether its with my eyes or with my body and that means experiencing the way the land turns, folds and is exposed, hides and covers itself, allows water to ebb and flow, reflects itself in the sky in the forms and patterns of the clouds and lays itself open under the sun, moon, sky and stars.

This is a living canvas and I respond to its elements as a living entity within a living, dynamic environment. The Swamp in the wasteland, like all land has a history and I see this living history in layers. The significant layers which I perceive in the Swamp are the Fossil Layer, the Larakeyah Layer, the WW II Layer and the Contemporary Layer. The energy of all these layers still resides in the land. The fossils dance in colour in extraordinary patterns through the rocks, the songs of the Larakeyah visit on the wind, small, blue green brass fragments lying scattered on the ground are reminders of a war which still lingers. The energy of young men spinning out in cars or tearing backwards and forwards on motorcycles is part of the energy of the contemporary layer. In the wet visiting families from Maningrida cross the mudflats in search of crabs. Sometimes a pair of horses are exercised in the area and occasionally boys on bicycles try their mountain bike skills. Regularly young men in stolen cars dump and burn their prey in the wasteland.

And then there is me. The one constant human element, visiting the Swamp almost every day of the year with my dogs. Eleven years ago it was birds and plants which I observed, recorded and photographed. Then I was overwhelmed by the colours and patterns of the rocks embedded with their records of the paths of fossil creatures. The patterns and energy of the whole Swamp - which includes the wet and dry, the day and night sky , the two legged and the four legged visitors, the painted cars and burned cars, the yellow clay earth and black tidal mud can be sourced in the rock. These rock formations which run like a backbone or a giant serpent through the Swamp, hold the blueprint for the energy of the whole Swamp. I am intimate with the patterns, symbols and circular formations revealed in the rocks and I see these patterns repeated in the surfaces of burned out stolen cars as they disintegrate back into the land; I see them in the cracking blue-grey black mud of the tidal flat and in the dappled coats of my dotted dogs. They appear in cloud formations hounded by high winds and in the choppy tidal waters after big rain. They are in the criss crossing marks and donut swirls and circles made by 'hoons' on the yellow clay flat and in the ever crossing, layered bird tracks , footprints, tyre welts and rippled water marks out on the mudflat. These layers of marks are paths of energy which I perceive as being part of something I call 'Swamp Dynamics'. I no longer simply record and observe these marks and patterns and layers of energy. Now I respond. I participate in the energy flow of the Swamp. The tide plays its part. The rain plays its part. The dry plays its part and the hoons play theirs.

In February 1999 as I stood on the skyline hill, which overlooks the yellow clay flat and the blue grey mudflat, I envisaged large spiral shapes issuing out from the yellow clay land, out onto the blue grey mudflat. I saw the spiral configuration as an extension of energy from 'the land' moving out onto the tidal flat. The energy lines would curl out and embrace the tidal flat and rest. (Extending "the hand" of the land out into the tidal flat) This is rock energy. All energy in the area comes from the yellow rocks. My feet take the energy out into the mudflat in a spiraling formation and back again to the land. Its a communion. I walk out into the centre of the spiral and back again affirming the land within the lay of the land. This is not literally conforming to the contours of the land but responding to the yellow flowing energy within the fluid form of the land. My whole body and ability to move is part of the work. I am totally part of the process.

I see the Swamp as a canvas, a sculptural environment and now as I walk out onto the mudflat, a printmaker's plate. Out onto the blue grey, black mud flat I step. Each step is a print. Each print is a mark. Every print mark is a dot dash and part of the large plate. My body is the printmaking tool and my feet make each mark. As I move forward my marks flow with the energy of the land. I am the burin, I am the scraper, I create the footprint burr, I make many marks to form an energy shape - a large spiral in the landscape. Each mark is laid over other marks. Layers of marks. My marks cross bird tracks, bird journeys, marks made by water, the incised paw marks of my dogs and the barefoot prints of the Maningrida women who walk beyond the lines of mangroves. Their marks will cross mine. I work in with the circular marks by 'the hoons'. Car spins in the thick mud and tight motorcycle, donut marks laid down months ago and regularly covered by high tidal waters and wet season run off are still visible when the tides recede. When crossing the hoon marks its like plodding across a gigantic linocut. Sometimes the mud is so deeply incised by circular tyre tracks that my own intaglio print marks are lost in the mounds and troughs of those deep marks.

The visual effect and texture of the plate is constantly changing. Casting little sharp shadows, the burred print marks of many footsteps have greater visual impact in the early morning or late afternoon light. On cloudy days the colour and soft textures of green moss growing in 'old' print marks leaps out next to the exposed blue grey edges of freshly incised print marks. This is a wonderland of marks. In the context of other visitors to the Swamp, I am anonymous. I am an anonymous printmaker, marker, painter, sculptor. When the hoons go home to dinner at 6pm I come into my own. In their absence I revitalize the plate. In the presence of, rajah shelducks, jabiru, white egrets, red capped dotterels and noisy plovers I walk the swampland.