Bea Buckland-Willis
Beatrice Buckland-Willis is a Sydney based artist, with a passion for all things print. In 2020 she completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the National Art School (AUS), majoring in Printmaking. Much of her work utilises traditional print processes such as relief, intaglio, monotyping and screen.
As a young artist experiencing chronic pain issues, Buckland-Willis is concerned with the representation of female pain and subverting ideas of the ‘normal vs. abnormal’ body. Regularly playing with satire and parody, she wishes to break down the idea that art must be serious to be taken seriously.
Her practice is multi-disciplinary, combining traditional print processes with digital technologies, analog photography and installation - often employing collage and found images. Buckland-Willis is passionate about supporting women in print and has organised and curated exhibitions as a part of the Wasteland Series which are focused on subverting tropes of the suburban experience through the female gaze.
#4 | Fighting the Inevitable (Construct), 2020, lino printed rice paper scroll on ladder structure. Dimensions variable. $2,950
Fighting the Inevitable is a printmedia-based installation work that explores the constant battle that is dealing with intermittent episodes of chronic pain. The work consists of over 10 metres of manually printed lino blocks, repeated across a continuous rice paper scroll and suspended over a ladder structure. Cascading onto the floor, the scroll interacts with the entire space with an inherent softness and delicacy. In contrast, the rigidity of the timber acts as a support and boundary for the fragility of the paper, alluding to the scaffolding imagery portrayed on the scroll itself.
The interaction of the two materials in the space speaks to the reconstruction of the body in a way that is simultaneously monumental and delicate. Interested in the significance of the continually healing body, the artist plays with scaffolding imagery as a symbol of the transient state of being in and out of pain - being somehow considered simultaneously 'fixed' and 'broken', 'abnormal' and 'normal'.
#5 | Disappointment Snippets, 2020, hand-printed lino block on receipt roll. Dimensions variable. NFS
Exhibited as an interactive installation during "The Wasteland Pt. 1" at Goodspace gallery in 2020. Participants were invited to press the FEED button on the machine and tear off a random snippet to take with them as a kind of record or 'receipt' of the exhibit.
Concerned with the abundance of paper receipts in her life, the artist decided to use these rolls as a 'scroll' to record inner thoughts, feelings and interactions in her everyday life. Acting as a kind of found poetry, the rolls cascade from the machine, spilling onto the floor like thoughts spilling out of a mouth and into the world. The images themselves are small hand-printed 'snippets' of the artist's everyday disappointments, and themselves act as documentation of the mundane intricacies of life.
#6 | The Aching Chronicles (I am not in my body), 2020, plaster-cast drypoint. 10 x 10cm (each). $55 (each)
#7 | The Aching Chronicles (I am not in my body, shards), 2020, plaster-cast drypoint. 10 x 10cm (each). $55 (each)
#8 | The Aching Chronicles (Abundantly Fragile), 2020, plaster-cast drypoint. 10 x 10cm (each). $55 (each)
Looking to expand definitions of printmaking, the artist began experimenting with plaster as a print material. Inexpensive and accessible, plaster casting acts as an exciting alternative to printing with a traditional printing press. The process is unpredictable, yielding mixed and often unexpected results.
Interested in construction materials as their own printing substrate, the introduction of plaster into the series has been a natural experimental progression of the works. Plaster acts as both an industrial material used to patch and sculpt, and a medical grade casting material used to literally scaffold the body. Plaster as a material is incredibly tactile to the artist as the maker, and its fragility can be compared to the fragility of the flesh.
