Audrey Macdonald’s Turkish Suite

The output engages with the field of Printmaking and cross-cultural dialogue in the visual arts. The work responded to a proposition by the curator, John Robinson, who had bought a second-hand book containing elements of a person’s life. The book contained the name Audrey MacDonald, an address in Edinburgh, a list of items to pack and a luggage label from the Hotel Rossiya in Moscow. Inspired by Turkish author Yashar Kemal’s novel, ‘They Burn Thistles’, my work engaged with the clues of cultural exchanges. The project aimed to engage artists in a thematic exhibition around imaging and imagining the life of a traveller.

Audrey MacDonald was used as a premise for researching different cultural traditions responding to the location of Hobart based on travel and exposure. A variety of visual responses were explored with initial involving copying sections of Persian miniatures. These forms were abstracted and developed into a suite of lithographic collages. The works contrasted chance-based organic lithographic washes on Japanese rice paper against strong geometric forms redolent of architecture. Incorporated into the strategy was thinking through Hobart as ‘Edinburgh’ in the sense that the building blocks of the cities are directly related to the mountain rocks they are carved from. This continues my research into the integration of culture and place influenced by forms of printmaking that are accessible through trade and travel. This work innovates on cultural traditions combining languages and materials from Japan, Turkey, Europe and Australia.