Jo Lankester • Bloodlines: Mapping the Landscape 2019

The pictures I make explore ideas of aesthetics, experience, and elements of the landscape – colour, line, texture, and form. This diptych print is made in response to oral stories shared by Gail Mabo about bloodlines, place, and traditional laws of boundary and ownership. The coloured inks used in the printing process were selected to best represent my interpretation of story and place – Mer Island, Torres Strait.

····· Jo Lankester gained a Bachelor of Visual Arts (BVA) majoring in printmaking at the Victorian College of the Arts in 1994. That year she was an award recipient of the 2nd Student International Art Biennial, Art Gallery Skopje, Macedonia, and winner of the Canson National Student Print Award. In 1996, Lankester was one of seven artists commissioned through the Australian Print Workshop (APW) to execute a body of work for the Crown Entertainment Complex, Melbourne. Two-time winner of the Printmaking Award at the Townsville Art Awards in 2013 & 2014, and Most Outstanding Visual Artist Award at the North Qld Art Awards in 2015. Lankester is a passionate printmaker living and working in Townsville, North Queensland. The natural environment informs her uniquely printed abstract fine art prints. Mark-making and experimentation is the process behind the work. Her focus in the medium of Collagraph is an ongoing enquiry resulting in the extension of the parameters of both the medium and her own visual language. Lankester’s artwork is represented in the National Gallery of Australia Print Collection through the purchase of Australian Print Workshop’s second archive of workshop proofs through the Gordon Darling fund in 2004, and by a private donor in 2002. Artbank purchased a series of small-scale prints of insects during her time as an access artist at the APW. She also has works in public and private collections throughout Australia and overseas.