Lines that could be scars

TY - ADVS

T1 - Lines that could be scars

A2 - Nicholson, Tom

N1 - Curated by Anne Virgo and Nicholas Thomas. 'Lines that Could be Scars', 24 drypoint etchings. 'Interview', pair of two-sided posters, each A1 This work was extensively acquired by private collectors, and a complete set of the work was also acquired by the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge, UK. This exhibition resulted from a collaboration between the University of Cambridge Museum in the United Kingdom and Australian Print Workshop, Melbourne. Hosted by the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Nicholson was one of three artists who travelled to the United Kingdom to study rarely seen and highly significant collections relating to Australia and the Pacific. The work was subsequently exhibited in the group exhibition 'Antipodes', Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, UK, 22 June 2016 to 26 September 2016. The work was discussed in 'The Stories We Tell', Imprint, Winter 2016, volume 50, issue 2, pp 26-30 Tom Nicholson’s work Lines that could be scars began in a small archive on a naval base in Portsmouth, UK, in March last year, where he saw John Webber’s drawing An Interview between Captain Cook and the natives. The earliest known European image of contact, Webber’s drawing shows Cook meeting a group of Aboriginal men at Adventure Bay on Bruny Island, Tasmania, in January 1777. Nicholson isolates a significant detail of the drawing: the handful of single lines that seem to designate scarification on the bodies of the Aboriginal men. Lines that could be scars is generated through a system of very reduced drypoint mark-making and a laborious processes of burnishing, through the relations between successive states across many weeks of working, and through the interplay between lines across different plates and “ghosts” of plates. It is a meditation on proximity and this originary historical moment of image-making. It is also a meditation on lines – what they might do or bear – and on the links between etching, scarring and remembering. The work was extensively acquired by private collectors, and a complete set of the work was also acquired by the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge, UK. The project will be documented in a large-scale publication co-published by the MAA and APW during 2017.

PY - 2016

Y1 - 2016

M3 - Commissioned or Visual Artwork

PB - Australian Print Workshop Gallery

CY - Fitzroy, Vic, Australia

T2 - Lines that could be scars

Y2 - 2 April 2016 through 30 April 2016

ER -