Manni Redlich: mredlich@csu.edu.au

"Art does enter life and affect it, just as life enters the work of art. At that wondrous point where they touch, the sorrow of life is redeemed."
- Gerald Nicosia, Memory Babe

The motivation for making visuals is a private thing; it's just an itch I have to scratch.

My background is printmaking. The etched plate has always seduced me: its low relief and minute textures, its reflective surface, its sheer physicality. Etching entails aspects of chance, of working in
opposites; the methodical step by step processes involved in the evolution of an image; that hard won lesson of working with, rather than dictating. Printmaking has taught me to tap dance on shifting sand.

My involvement in mixed media works came about through a long process of elimination; finding methods and materials that suited my temperament; materials that matched the physical qualities of an etched and inked plate. I'm not sure what this latest batch of work is about.

I'm much too close in time to step back objectively; this is just where I am at this particular point. The works have some intimations about natural growth (variations in a given unit), inner forces of order and chance, of change and interaction, of light and illumination.

I'm not too concerned with 'meaning', as each of us brings our own baggage of meaning and interpretation to a work. The more personal interpretations a work can hold, the more enriched it becomes with meaning.

My aim, above all, is to create spaces of contemplation and interaction. I value stillness and presence, for the works to act as resonators of experience or facilitators of dialogue and communion.

At rock bottom, it's a gratuitous attempt to make something (dare I say, 'beautiful' and of some 'personal truth') out of the tragic ecstasy of being merely human.