From a distance: printmaking exhibition 2021

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MAY SPACE Online is proud to present a group online exhibition of contemporary Tasmanian printmakers by Helen Mueller and Melissa Smith.

'There is a lively and vibrant printmaking community in Tasmania and this exhibition showcases a selection of its work. Practitioners well established in the discipline are represented, but the focus is on emerging artists.

Imposed by a virus, 'distance' has become the imperative of our times. We are socially distanced, we are distanced from friends and family in other places as travel restrictions have been applied. Daily work and consumption of everything from food to culture and entertainment has largely shifted to on-line and has become an at-a-distance engagement. Our perspective is changing as our familiar terrain contracts. It is shifting from the global to the local.

The Tasmanian vision has perhaps always been one that came 'from a distance', a place that is an island below another island at the 'far end' of the world. Geographical isolation and distance has often directed the focus of many artists living here to the local and the specific experience of what it means to be living and working on this island. Paramount to that experience is a response to the pristine natural environment, and a commitment to protecting its landscape into the future. Other artists, sometimes those who have originally come from elsewhere, look at their location more broadly and consider what it means to think of 'home', not just in terms of geography, but perhaps quite broadly in the context of culture, politics, gender and race. Perhaps this view from a distance, that step away from the mainstream, provides Tasmanians with a unique ability to engage fully with and appreciate the local on a more immediate level, something we might all have to learn to do as distancing and isolation continues to circumscribe our lives.

These works by Tasmanian printmakers represent their perspective, from a distance, on where they live and how they see things from that viewpoint.'

- Helen Mueller and Melissa Smith, curators