This triptych shows snow-covered bushland at Lake Mountain, ten years after it was burnt by the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires. It is part of the artist's decade-long, site-specific exploration of the mountain as the bush struggles to regenerate after being extensively damaged by fire. Reflecting on Earth's beauty and precariousness, this project continues Koenning's engagement with ecological issues. It highlights her concern for nature and the way extreme weather conditions in a changing climate are increasingly impacting destructively on communities and the environment.
While Koenning's practice is concerned with human impacts on the environment, her photographs are not strictly scientific or observational in nature. In visual phrases, which she describes as 'ecological imaginaries', Koenning eschews disaster-imagery in the search for an earthen poetics. Liminal and illusory, here the fragile limbs of Lake Mountain trees could be coated with ash or snow; shrouded in smoke or mist. In this triptych, filled with images, part continuous, part repetitious, the mountain is storied with summer, fire, winter, snow and the Anthropocene.
(2023)
Also known as Giclee prints or bubble-jet prints, pigment ink-jet prints are generated by computer printers from digital or scanned files using dye-based or pigment-based inks. A series of nozzles spray tiny droplets of ink onto the paper surface in a precise pattern that corresponds to the digital image file. In dye-based prints the ink soaks into the paper, whereas in pigment-based prints the ink rests and dries on top of the paper surface.
Whilst the term is broad, pigment ink-jet prints have come to be associated with prints produced on fine art papers. They are the most versatile and archival method of printing available to photographers today. A wide variety of material on which an image can be printed with such inks are available, including various textures and finishes such as matte photo paper, watercolour paper, cotton canvas or pre-coated canvas.
