MARK GRAVER – UMBRA SUMUS

MAY 30 – JULY 25
gallery open 7 days 9.00 am – 5.00 pm
Taken from a quote by Horace, ‘Pulvis et umbra sumus’ (we are but dust and shadow) Umbra Sumus is an ongoing project containing photopolymer and acrylic resist etchings, video and sound works.

The work is partly a response to the death, in January 2011, of the artist’s father and also to the wider human condition.

The use of shadows alludes to the movement of light, the passing of time and, ultimately, to mortality. Still images are used for the etchings while the video works allow for an actual temporal experience using the same or similar source material.

The use of photographs, video and found sound relates also to place, and again reinforces the idea of time. Time fixed, or recorded, in a specific place, reproduced then re-presented through video. The shadow source photographs are gathered from different places and countries to emphasise the universal correspondence of shared existence.

Based at Wharepuke in Kerikeri, Mark Graver is an award winning artist and author of ‘Non-Toxic Printmaking’ (London, A&C Black, 2011) and founder of the The Wharepuke Print Studio and, with partner Tania Booth, Art at Wharepuke Gallery.

His work is held in many international collections including the V&A Museum, London, The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Whangarei Art Museum, Whangarei, NZ, Jinling Museum of Art, China, Guandong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China, Penang State Art Gallery, Malaysia ,National Museum Of Fine Art, Taiwan, Douro Museum of Printmaking, Portugal, Durban University – Arts for Humanity Collection, Literature and Arts Department, Harbin, China, CONARTE – Non Toxic Printmaking Museum, Monterrey, Mexico, Painting and Sculpture Museums Association, Istanbul Turkey and the James Wallace Trust, NZ.

Images from the Umbra Sumus series can be seen here
UMBRA SUMUS
Port Jackson Press
Melbourne
June 3rd – June 28th

If you’re in Melbourne during June a selection of works from the Umbra Sumus series can be seen at Port Jackson Press at 84 Smith Street, Collingwood

Oaks III 2014
200 x 200 mm

Mark Graver – Artist Statements 2014

Memory, Place and Time
The traces of time etched into the environment, be it natural or urban, external or internal; the surfaces making up a city, or the forms of nature observed, remembered and abstracted, produced, re-produced and re-presented.

Current practice involves working with printmaking, digital video and sound with interest concentrated at the point where these approaches meet and cross – the editonable act/event/encounter of pulling a print or screening a film, the re-presenting of this act/event/encounter and its relationship with time, place and memory.

Works are related technically, conceptually and through content, often with linked images being manipulated and developed from a single source, and through on-going fluid series of works that can exist individually or as installations that examine the relationships between the temporal and the static

Combinations
July 9th – August 1st
Centre for Contemporary Printmaking, Seacourt Print Workshop, Bangor, Northern Ireland

Opening Preview Wed July 9th 7.00 – 9.00 pm

Curated by Mark Graver Combinations brings together a group of artists from New Zealand and the UK with a shared interest in hybrid and intermedial approaches to printmaking and the relationship between established print media and evolving technologies.

Combinations is intended as an introduction to a larger project Re:Print/Re:Present, a sustainable, fluid, evolving entity that can develop, expand (or contract) into numerous international exhibitions, exchanges and collaborative research processes and projects with non-hierarchical entry and exit points.