Christine Willcocks

Willcocks's work evokes visual beauty in a troubled landscape. The artist successfully translates to paper the beauty, quiet and meditative stillness of objects that no longer have life. She responds to a transient space which hovers between life and death. The addition of delicate etched glass museum domes raises questions about our need to collect things. Willcock's silent, lifeless birds and trees are presented as scientific artifacts - as tools for research - but they also suggest that our rituals of collecting are attempts to retain a physical connection to all things lost.
Susi Muddiman, Director, Tweed River Gallery

Over the past years my work has focused on the demise of the natural world and its renewal, often as objects or artifacts within an institutional setting. My prints 'Bird Skins' initiated an exploration of the rituals of collecting and how this act plays a key role in the preservation of our memories. My fascination is not just with collections but also with the psychology of display. How the vitrine actually relates to the object, what they reveal about the work of constructing and reconstructing history. While my work takes in cross disciplines such as drawing, photography and 3D, it is the printmaking that is the backbone of my practise. I wish to expand the possibilities of drypoint etching from cardboard, a process that suits a non-toxic environment.
Artist Statement - Christine Willcocks