MYTHO-POETIC: Print & Assemblage Works by Glen Skien

Glen Skien, Archive of the Unfamiliar (detail), 2013, altered postcards, thread, ink, encaustic, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist

MYTHO-POETIC: Print and Assemblage Works by Glen Skien interrogates the human condition with artist books, assemblages, collages and installations that bring to life social histories and vexing questions of Australian identity, place and myth. Skien’s etching practice is the platform for his work in other media, while underlying narratives are presented through the use of symbolic imagery such as maps, postcards, books and ephemera. The exhibition offers viewers an immersive experience rich in imagery that navigates residues of the past and creates new propositions for identity and historical awareness.
Skien is highly respected in the national printmaking community and his following among regional audiences and workshop participants borders on reverential at times. Skien is uncompromising in his ethical vision, and the delicacy and sensitivity of his images spark immediate affinity. Matters of the heart and disturbances of the psyche are his dark and transformative subtexts.

Images of fish and birds, boats and houses, solitary figures and cryptic inscriptions appear frequently as myths and icons. These motifs are highly evocative of familiar places, lost encounters, life histories, and autobiographical chronicles.

“As with atlas cartographers, Skien’s images of the past are fleeting, recuperated from lost and forgotten sources,” says Dr Jess Berry, Lecturer, Queensland College of Art, Brisbane.

The exhibition interrogates the human condition with assemblages and installations that bring to life social histories and vexing questions of Australian identity, place and myth. Skien’s etching practice is the platform for his work, with underlying narratives utilising the symbolic imagery of maps, postcards, books and ephemera.

Skien is highly respected in the national printmaking community and the delicacy and sensitivity of his images spark immediate affinity. Matters of the heart and disturbances of the psyche are his dark and transformative subtexts.

“In their reconfigured state, the original images become almost unrecognisable, echoing the way memory plays the game of Chinese whispers, obscured by what we know and see later. Thus, Skien mobilises his ghostly atlas of images, objects and texts to remind us that history is an apparition of the disappeared and the departed,” says Berry.

MYTHO-POETIC is organised by Gympie Regional Gallery and toured by Museums & Galleries Queensland to 16 venues in all Australian States until mid-2016.

11 June – 28 August 2016