Colour coded screen prints on paper - FINAL

After printing these images, which are colour coded by season (using only 3 colours but blending two together to signify Autumn and Spring) I had the realisation that I should have just included a 4th colour. After all, as you can clearly see in these images, the bright orange which is the code for organic materials becomes a distinctly brown colour in areas where the items are more dense.

This idea hit me just a couple of weeks out of our deadline and I thought it was a shame that I wouldn't have time to execute it. Not on the scale I wanted to, anyway. Especially since I'd already cleaned off the screens from the conveyor belt prints, so I would have to do everything from scratch again.

But what the hey. Time running out, I went for it.

Here is the outcome. 50+ individual prints, spread across 5 A1 pages, to make a sort of 'mural', or suite of adjoining prints, that is 3 metres long.

The title is 'Arrivals'

Side by side - these can be laid out in any order, as the images form a continuous loop:

Playing with colours...

I'm very systematic with my choices, as you can tell from my video mock-ups... so here's some WIP screenshots of me 'thinking through' colours and layouts for some potential extra screen prints.

Pulling colours from reference images

Tidied up

Beginning to morph them together to work out the average...

All overlapping

Final swatch: green for spring, brown for autumn, orange for summer and blue for winter.

Double checking against the original images

Applied to my images:

Documentation: grape spiders

At the start of August, I took a couple of prints and the grocery bags to gift as a thank you to the people at Mercy Radiology and MPI for letting me use their scanners and pick their brains. They were stoked, and said they would frame the prints and put them on display in both workplaces! At Mercy they also said I was more than welcome to come back and do some more X-rays. The images I’ve been using are getting a bit tired so I might just take them up on that offer…

While I was at the MPI headquarters, they also asked if they could use the image for marketing/publicity graphics. I really hope something comes out of that.

I also got talking with Dale about the fruit fly and other instances of imported fruit contamination, including a recent recall of grapes from Mexico which were found to be infested with black widow spiders.

That discussion led to a little screen print drawing:

Resized

(if I do any more with this idea then next time the spider will be more subtle, orangey-coloured)

Food? exhibition poster

I designed the poster for our show, using an image from my trip to the Customs centre.

First design (before artists had confirmed - and before I found out the poster needed all the artists' names on it:)

The final design was printed in 3 different colours - to catch attention, and also to reference the different colours from the biosecurity scans.

At the time I didn't realise just how well the poster would work as an indication of the futuristic, 'sci-fi' feel of the show. A lot of people who walked in said that it felt like a space ship. This was a surprising angle - as the show's curator, I didn't expect this one element would become so prominent. I think Dominique's work especially got people thinking about the future of food, the idea of synthetic solutions, etc. and a lot of visitors found this approach to be quite alarming. This in itself was exciting - the effectiveness of the shock factor.

Anyway. Here are the final poster designs, as seen around Elam/uni:

Documentation: Weeks 15-18 'Bio In Security'

Bio In Security

Watercolour on paper, 55x73cm

Notes from my application for the Henrietta and Lola Ann Tunbridge watercolour scholarship:

'Delicate' and 'detailed' - not necessarily qualities which are encouraged in a contemporary art environment, but they certainly explain why watercolours are my go-to medium. ... I enjoy detailed line-work, and this is a medium that creates its own fine outlines, from pigments pooling at the edge of a painted area
My current project is primarily about food systems, and these works address topics that interest me such as the Queensland fruit fly, the Seralini affair, and the ongoing GMO debate. I have been drawing links between the materiality of food and art - e.g. gum arabic, used as the binder in watercolour paints, is also used widely in processed food.
As paper itself also essentially acts as a binder, watercolours are notoriously unforgiving (unlike acrylic and oil paint, you can't scrub a layer away and paint over it,) but this is also what makes them appear so luminous, like a digital screen. Such translucency lends itself to to the process of layering, and aligns with my interest in X-rays. It also refers to the 'transparency' of certain systems - food labelling, medical science, surveillance, biosecurity. 

It's as if these x-rays were made to be translated into a watercolour painting. See also my small multi-media piece, colour-coding the layers to different paint media (watercolours, acrylic and oils)