Joanna Kambourian
Born in 1976, Sydney, Australia, Joanna Kambourian is an Australian designer, printmaker and visual artist of Armenian heritage.
Throughout her creative practice, she explores, experiences and examines the idea of ‘hybrid hyphenations’ within contemporary cultural and social identity. Kambourian continues to document an ongoing journey, a search for identity and belonging from a post-colonial perspective that crosses generations and encompasses the diasporic experience.
Her work illustrates these complex ideas around identity through a multi-disciplinary practice. A first class Honors graduate of the Visual Arts program at Southern Cross University, Lismore, Kambourian also studied printmaking and artists books at Pratt Institute, New York in 2006. Kambourian has over 20 years experience in Graphic Design, Illustration and Typography as well as being a practicing visual artist, experienced printmaker and founder of Lismore Art Space (2010-2018).
#1 | Snake Charmer Strut II, 2020, misprints (screen prints) cut and collaged, 15 x 11 cm, $85.
#2 | Snake Charmer Strut I, 2020, misprints (screen prints) cut and collaged, 15 x 11 cm, $85.
#12 | Magic Eye, 2020, screen print with ink detail, 50 x 35 cm, $350.
#31 | Ourakhoutioun (Happiness), 2020, misprints (screen prints) cut and collaged, 15 x 11 cm, $85.
#32 | Im Papak (My Wish), 2020, misprints (screen prints) cut and collaged, 15 x 11 cm, $85.
#37 | Hypnotic Optics. 2019, screen prints on washi paper, 22 x 15 cm (each), $100 each or $550 for all 7 panels.
All the ‘mis-prints' featured are those experimental prints that either get pushed to the back of the plan drawers or re-configured into new works.
The postcards were test prints and when I collaged them together they became unique works with interesting shapes appearing. They are a play on ideas around cultural symbols and motifs, the titles being taken from contemporary Armenian music by Bei-Ru.
The rice paper works were also test prints that were going to become an artist book, but never did, I still find their haphazard pattern interesting and love that that about them. Sometimes the mis-prints are the most interesting prints, with infinite possibilities.
Magic Eye was a print destined to have more layers and somehow, just got forgotten, left behind. I still love what it is as much as what it was intended be!
As a printmaker working primarily with silkscreen processes, there are always hundreds of prints that never make it, test prints, off prints, mis registered, but they still have their own unique qualities, I cant throw them out, just squirrel them away until they call out to become something else entirely. Losing my studio in the recent floods has made me aware of how valuable all those experiments were in feeding back into my printmaking practice.
