New etchings for DCA Editions (2020)
Availiable from
DCA Dundee Contemporary Arts and Ingleby Gallery
David Austen
Medusa Tree, 2020
Etching from original drawing by the artist on Fabriano
Rosaspina Bianco 285gsm paper
48.3 x 34.5cm
Edition of 10
Price: £500 plus VAT (unframed)
David Austen
Apple, 2020
Etching from original drawing by the artist on Fabriano
Rosaspina Bianco 285gsm paper
48.3 x 34.5cm
Edition of 10
Price: £500 plus VAT (unframed)
David Austen created these two subtle etchings during his collaboration with DCA Print Studio. ‘Medusa Tree’ originates from a series of drawings he made for a painting of the same name in his DCA exhibition Underworld. It evokes the ‘mythological dimension’ he had observed in this unusual tree while in Majorca, and what he called the ‘elephantine’ quality of its leafless and twisting branches.
‘Apple’ is an etching created from an intimate drawing that traces a series of voluptuous, heart shaped, lines at the core of the apple. Suggestive of the biblical allegory of the apple in the Garden of Eden, of the ‘original’ female, of seduction, and the human search for beginnings and truth, this motif recalls the endurance and recurrence of certain narratives through time.
By finding instants where archaic symbolism and mythology cross over into our world and capturing and retelling such moments through finely observed detail and texture, Austen reconnects his subjects with the here and now, with human hand and touch. Seen together, these etchings suggest the artistic genre of the still life, or ‘nature morte’ in which the transience of nature is halted, ‘suspended’ in print upon the page. Such stories, re-imagined through print, cause us to reflect upon the historical complexities and nuances within the everyday, and to re-see moments that hover at the intersection between the real and inventive.
