Cod Piece

This piece by Rhyll Plant was awarded the 2002 Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery Print & Drawing Acquisitive Award. This edition is number 8 of 10 and was printed in 2003.

Plant, a former museum collection manager, draws on a rich tradition of scientific illustration in her practice. The making of her artworks is an integrated process, resulting from the blending of printed imagery from the natural world with the literary components of language and wit. While they are visually less obvious, these cognitive elements nevertheless play a role of equal significance to the wood engraving as they are intended to prompt intellectual and emotional response.

The design of Cod Piece emerged from her desire to honour the enormity of the Cod in the size of the work. Her familiarity with the Murray Cod Maccullochella peelii peelii was based on decades of viewing the impressive specimen on display at Museum Victoria. Even her largest woodblock at 300mm diameter seemed to diminish the fish. She envisioned the Murray Cod engraved over a series of blocks and debated if the image would still make sense in such a disjointed format. Plant attached six blocks to a sheet of wood, arranging them in a loose pattern to suit the lateral view she had in mind. Once the surface was level, she blackened the blocks and transferred the white chalk line she would follow with her diamond graver engraving tool. Many days and much stippling with her fine round-end scorper later, and she rolled the woodblocks with a thin layer of stiff oil-based printing ink, laid on a 560mm x 750mm sheet of Arches 88 printing paper, some packing, some nervous energy and the great pressure of the printing press. The resulting image and its unusual, yet readable format alludes to the fragmented yet cohesive nature of the Murray River environment and the need for us to keep the pieces aligned to maintain balance.