Seed :: Jenny Kitchener

SEED JENNY KITCHENER 9 October – 28 November 2021 Lismore Regional Gallery

SEED JENNY KITCHENER Seed appears at first as a menagerie of beautiful and iconic birds, insects, plants, and flowers, and indeed as a celebration of their importance. At second glance the creatures are simultaneously familiar and strange, they are frozen in time like splayed and pinned insect specimens, scientific illustrations and stuffed birds in bell jars. There is something awry in this landscape.

Kitchener grew up in 1960s Sydney with the magnificent Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park at the end of her street, in an era when children were free to venture off with their friends, to play, and explore without adult supervision.

She speaks fondly of her childhood, surrounded by trees, with a father who was an amateur photographer, and mother who was a painter. They encouraged her to observe the natural world, and taught her the names of the wildflowers. These formative years surely formed the basis of Kitchener’s artistic practice and world view.

During the 1990s while studying a Bachelor of Arts and Honours at the University of New England and

then Masters of Arts at Southern Cross University, she studied under printmaker Jan Davis. Kitchener credits Davis for instilling in her the importance of developing both mastery of materials and conceptual rigour. It was then that she developed a deep research approach to her practice that continues to this day, where technical, historical and scientific knowledge coalesce in the artist as activist.

Seed is the fifth and final exhibition of a decade-long series examining the crucial role of birds and insects in pollination of plants in Australia. New works created for Seed are flanked by significant works from the preceding exhibitions (Array, 2014, Tweed River Regional Gallery; Folly, 2015, Port Jackson Press Print Gallery; Pollinate, 2018, Grafton Regional Gallery and Bloom, 2019, PG Printmaker Gallery). Like a long-term weather pattern, she sees this exhibition as the conclusion of a cycle, and simultaneously the start of a new one.

When I discovered Kitchener’s work, I became aware of the role of birds (in particular Honeyeaters and Parrots) in pollinating many of Australia’s iconic plants. Banksia, eucalypts, correa, callistemon, grevillea, and kangaroo paws entice birds with their sweet nectar. As they feed,

the birds transfer pollen from one plant to the next, and over time, plants and animals developed symbiotic relationships helping them flourish for millennia. However the destruction of their habitat, feral plants and animals, and human-induced climate changes threaten many species, long before their importance in our world is recognised. This loss, and lack of understanding is the impetus for Jenny Kitchener’s work.

Ideas are given ‘voice’ through Kitchener’s mastery of, and experimentation with, the traditional media and techniques that pulse in the heart of a printmaker.

Linocut, collage, monoprinting, screen printing and artist books have long been central to her practice.

Her compositions begin with the careful selection and preparation of source materials, then a playful process of arranging and rearranging, collaging images, patterns, illustrations and symbols from found books and existing prints. Once composed, the image either stands alone as a collage, or is carved and printed as a linocut, and perhaps combined with chine collé, monoprints, nature prints, or hand-tinted with watercolour.

She is known for her linocuts with distinctive black and white graphic images. Cutting away the negative spaces

of an image from the rubbery lino block with sharp hand tools is a subtractive process. There is only one chance to get it right, once a section of lino is removed it can’t be reversed. It is a physically taxing process that requires long periods of concentration and precision.

Over time Kitchener has developed a rich and distinctive visual language steeped in symbolism and imbued with references to botany and zoology. Majestic birds and insects are jostled by incongruous human artifacts such as bar codes, memory sticks, clocks, scissors, and balance scales. Each element of the images is loaded with meaning for the viewer to decipher.

I sometimes think of the imagery in my linocuts as akin to the didactic role of the stained glass windows in churches; to tell a story in pictures.- Jenny Kitchener.

The elements of Kitchener’s works fuse together an eclectic range of influences and eras, where the realistic, stylistic and surreal gather together on the picture plane.

Falling shows the remnants of our endemic landscape: native seeds, pollen, dead insects, leaves and severed bird feet tumble down the centre of the picture, as the new regime of beautiful but introduced garden plants

encroach from the sides. This fight for space takes place against a background of Bridget Riley’s black and white Op art, that confuses the eye like dazzle camouflage, or a synthetic heat haze. The ornate gold picture frame imposes a Eurocentric lens through which to view a landscape in turmoil.

The 203 reduction linocuts of Seed bank are collected, arranged and ordered into a strict grid format, a reference to the human approach of collecting, ordering and analysing. Each tiny gem holds within it a genetic code that extends back through history, together the colours and forms of their organic diversity is a splendour to behold. But there are seeds already missing from this collection.

Kitchener has lived now for forty years on her rural property outside Kyogle and the new works in Seed carry a strong sense of her home and the plants and animals that live there. Dispersal and Scatter use a 15th century scientific fieldwork technique to record plants from life.

Nature printing involves transferring ink onto plant specimens, and printing directly from the plant to

paper to preserve their tiny structures for posterity. In Casting seed I and Casting seed II Kitchener is like an archaeologist preserving the details of a dig, pressing seeding plants into soft clay, and casting them in white plaster ovals to capture their fragile low relief ghosts. A deep familiarity with one location allows the noise of the world to fall away in these works as we are invited to ponder ever more nuanced records of the landscape.

Kitchener’s work functions in much the same way as a nectar-laden grevillea attracts a Honeyeater. Her works lure us with a colourful array of our beloved Australian animal characters and bold compositions, mesmerising us with black and white patterns and delicate details.

While we unwittingly enjoying the visual feast, the works simultaneously transfer their genetic material, and ideas into our consciousness.

Fiona Fraser, 2021 Curator, Lismore Regional Gallery

Images: Front and back cover: Seed totem II 2021, three panel linocut with collage.

Inside pages (left to right): Casting seed I (detail) 2021, eight wall panels, plaster casts, sizes variable (approx 150cm long); Scatter 2021, seven panel monoprint, 56 x 83cm; Dispersal 2021, oval monoprint, 54 x 28cm; Disarray 2021, oval monoprint, 54 x 28cm.

Above: Seed bank 2021, reduction linocut, 203 small prints, 48 x 48cm.

All images courtesy the artist. Photography: Jodie Harris Jenny Kitchener would like to thank the amazing staff and volunteers at the Lismore Regional Gallery for their ongoing support, who have helped bring this exhibition from seed to fruition.

Images and text are copyright of the artist, the writer, and Lismore Regional Gallery. All rights reserved. Except under the conditions described in the Australian Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, duplicating or otherwise without the permission of the copyright owners.

LIsmore Regional Gallery is a Lismore City Council facility supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW.

11 Rural Street, Lismore 2480 NSW | T 61 2 6627 4600 | E art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | W lismoregallery.org

Lismore Regional Gallery