CONTEMPORARY ART STOCKROOM Christine Willcocks

Christine Willcocks combines a range of printmaking, installation and photographic processes to explore notions of museology and the natural world and the conceptual spaces such environments evoke in the viewer. Employing a range of display devices such as vitrines, domes and antique frames to house contemporary works, the artist highlights the passage of museological traditions and our relationships to concepts of preservation, both social and environmental.

In a series of new drawings and prints by Northern Rivers artist Christine Willcocks, the yellow insignia of highways and pedestrian passageways exist as a placeholder to re-orient us; through rural, urban and psychogeographic spatial scores. Reminiscent of these Lynchian lines, yellow ink is employed as a framing device to contour and contain a suite of more incidental leitmotifs. In a sparing effect, minimal geometric abstraction rubs up against more embroiled monochromatic imagery of trees, mountains and rocks. This pairing announces a stylistic re-enactment of the experience of moving between landscapes and physical and psychological thresholds. For this new series of works, Willcocks draws on her protracted encounters in various natural and urban landscapes; from the rainforest of her home and the central mountain district of New Zealand, to the cobbled streets of Paris and Melbourne.
Excerpt from Wild Rocks & Tamed Pathways catalogue essay by Abbra Kotlarczyk 2017

Willcocks's work evokes visual beauty in a troubled landscape. The artist successfully translates to paper the beauty, quiet and meditative stillness of objects that no longer have life. She responds to a transient space which hovers between life and death. The addition of delicate etched glass museum domes raises questions about our need to collect things. Willcock's silent, lifeless birds and trees are presented as scientific artifacts - as tools for research - but they also suggest that our rituals of collecting are attempts to retain a physical connection to all things lost.
Susi Muddiman, Director, Tweed River Gallery

Over the past years my work has focused on the demise of the natural world and its renewal, often as objects or artifacts within an institutional setting. My prints 'Bird Skins' initiated an exploration of the rituals of collecting and how this act plays a key role in the preservation of our memories. My fascination is not just with collections but also with the psychology of display. How the vitrine actually relates to the object, what they reveal about the work of constructing and reconstructing history. While my work takes in cross disciplines such as drawing, photography and 3D, it is the printmaking that is the backbone of my practise. I wish to expand the possibilities of drypoint etching from cardboard, a process that suits a non-toxic environment.
Artists Statement - Christine Willcocks

Willcocks has been a finalist (acquired) in the Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award in 2016 and 2014. In 2015 she was acquired by the Kedumba Drawing Award in and was a finalist (acquired) for the Fremantle Arts Center Print Award. In 2014 she was the recipient of the highly sought after Studio Residency at the Paris Cite, facilitated through the Australia Council. Since 2013 she has held the position of Co-Director and lecturer at the Byron School or Art in Byron Bay. Willcocks is represented in numerous major Australian collections including Artbank, The Print Council of Australia, State Library of Queensland, The State Library of Victoria, Queensland University of Technology and Southern Cross University.

CATALOGUE ESSAYS

Wild Rocks & Tamed Pathways, by Abbra Kotlarczyk 2017
Souvenir, by Phe Luxford 2015

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Nothing to See Here 2017
monoprint transfer on paper
30cm x 120cm (framed 51 x 135cm)
$3,200 AUD

Another Place 2019
watercolour transfer on 640gsm Artistico Grana Satiana paper
76cm x 76cm framed
$2,500 AUD

Asplenium Baileyanum 2013
drypoint etching from cardboard, Artist's Proof
120cm x 60cm unframed
$1,100 AUD

Cyclosorus Dentatus 2013
drypoint etching from cardboard, Artist's Proof, 2 available
120cm x 60cm unframed
$1,100 AUD

Pteridomania 2012
drypoint etching from cardboard, Artist's Proof
40cm x 60cm unframed
$550 AUD

Butterflies 2013
drypoint etching from cardboard, Artist's Proof
38cm x 54cm unframed
$550 AUD

Razor Grinder-the cicada (open winged) #2 2012
dry point etching, ink and wax on paper, edition 2 of 6
33cm x 94cm
$1,100 AUD