Eclectus Australis – Brown Goshawk2018
Artist statement: This image is from my latest series of work called Eclectus Australis. Both the Indigenous and the invading are seen to populate this image. A Brown Goshawk one of Australia’s foremost birds of prey clutches our great ecological disaster, the European rabbit, whilst perched over the colonial inland corridor that is the Hawkesbury River. Influenced by Sir Arthur Streeton in his master oil painting, ‘Purple noon’s transparent might’ 1896, I have placed the viewer high and floating above the magnificence of the Hawkesbury landscape. This in my mind highlights the clean, unbridled Australian landscape as Streeton did in the late 19th century, juxtaposing a new Australia from the carved out confines of an old and tamed Europe.
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.
