Rabbit Saves the World

A good few months ago maybe it was in the early Summer I noticed Anita Jung's work on Inkteraction, and really liked her piece which she had made using smoke and maybe stencils.

  Anyway so that was that.  I often see peoples artwork on Inkteraction that I like and  well that's one of the reason I like it.  I suppose it's the printmakers "Facebook" but without all the distractions.    A little while later I noticed that Anita had put a notice up, inviting fellow printmakers to participate in an installation/collaboration which had the working title "Rabbit Saves the World".  I read through the brief and thought it was something I could work with, because with  my disability nowadays, it's extremely difficult for me to attend conferences such as Impact.  I thought,  it would be a way for me to feel part of the event.  I had been disappointed that this years Impact ( like most of the other ones apart from Berlin in which I participated in a portfolio, called "Emission"  co ordinated by Mary Robinson  had no portfolios exchange projects announced for people to apply to be in and this would be a way to contribute. 

 I hasten to add that I also participated in a project called "Can- Can't / Do Don't" a site specific  exhibition, at Michaelis School of fine art, Univ Cape Town co ordinated by Carinna Parriman from U. C. E.,  in South Africa when the Impact 3 conference, was held there.

I spent ages looking around at Rabbits and their mythological historical social significance in various cultures and so on, in the end I almost began to loathe rabbits - thats the way it gets sometimes !!!.


In the end, however,  I went with the idea of one of the cliched things,  that rabbits are renowned for i.e., reproduction.   But in the sense of representing the idea of people who cared about the environment,  kind of replicating the sentiment through themselves, their actions, their life styles and so on.   Well at least, that was the idea behind what I went with in the end.    I made a  drypoint on polypropylene plate,  just using line.    I knew that the stuff I sent to Anita was going to be cut up and  composed/arranged into an installation so I sent stuff to her,  that suited this way of working.    I had some rabbit imagery from the time I was doing R+D toward making a bookart piece for the artists book, exhibition in Vilnius, Lithuania organized by  Kestutis Vasiliunas  (who was a fellow artist in the "Printmaking at the Edge book" and the Falun Graphic Triennial in Sweden and he had sent me notification of the submission date and so on.
Just found this excellent link to the Bookart exhibition in Vilnius "Rabbit and House" by one of the participants,  Click on profile on the top of the page to find out more about her.  Also a link to her blog which looks pretty interesting.
 In the end I wasn't able to get something satisfactory together on time BUT as I was saying,  I still had all this material that I had produced so I sent some of that along with these new "reproducing rabbit earth mother"  figures to the RSW project.   Anita and a bunch of other artists attending the conference and some students spent a couple of days at the venues in Bristol putting the installation together and I am planning to put a folder of images from that,  onto my own art portfolio website in the near future.
I did take some  photos though, of the materials I sent, just  before I posted it off .