Emma is a conceptual artist and art educator living and working in a small town called Riebeek Kasteel in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. Exploring ideas about experiences associated with loss and place, her art practice includes an output in a wide range of media and techniques, including installations, painting, printmaking, photography, artist’s books, and film.
STATEMENT
For the last 20 years my art
practice has been a vehicle to explore ideas associated with the experience of
loss and how it links with place, such as displacement, sense of place and
site-specific commemoration. My artistic output includes a wide range of techniques
and formats, including installation, photography, drawing, painting, artist’s
books and printmaking.
Printmaking as a technique is of
particular interest to me: the process of making a print suggests a play
between absence and presence, which feeds into the concept of loss. I often use
the remains found at sites of displacement as a starting point for my
artmaking, such as using found objects to construct collagraph plates, or using
discarded clothing pieces to create monotype prints. I consider the resulting
print as a document, a partial recording of the remnants and traces of loss.
My prints have also found their way into my artist’s books, where I combine drawing, linocut, monotype and collagraph techniques.
