Kath Hastings, Artist, Writer - Australia

I did this series in the mid 90's shortly after a trip to the Bungle Bungles. This first print is a "monprint', whereby one draws directly onto the plate and then the plate is run through a printing press. the north face of the Bungle Bungle differs from the south where the "beehive" formations amaze with their various stripes of orange, brown and white. In the northen part, it is the orange and the contrast of the white palm treeon the orange soil that amazes. they are remnants of an age long, long past when the rainforest met the desert. A monprint is the name given to a print whereby the printmaker has drawn directly onto the plate and then passed the plate through a printing presss. Bungle Bungles aerial view (on right) is a multi plate etching using various etching techniques to reproduce my feelings about seeing the Bungle Bungles from the air. I hadn't realized just how one could interpret the monoprint on the left. ...unitl I saw it on the wall. ...

Dear Hendrickje, Three hundred and forty-one years is a little late for the diagnosis of breast cancer to reach you. It's in your left breast, Hendrickje Stoffels, the doctors say. The signs are there! The dimpling under your left nipple. The doctors debate. Research papers are written in medical journals. You have become an historical case, Hendrickje, more easily recognised by most Australian women than Rembrandt himself. There you sit, preserved for eternity, with the cells malignant and reproducing in your nubile left breast. Saint Valentine's Day 1990 was the last day I had two breasts. I was forty-seven years old. Far past the prime of fecund womanhood you exude as Bathsheba, the desired of King David. I had already outlived you by ten years. I now live on borrowed time. We can do that in the twentieth century. My biological time clock has well and truly exploded. "You’re not supposed to be here at all. It's all been a gorgeous mistake." sings Sinead O...

Left: Natural Pigments, pastel and acrylic on callico. My body is a map written on with the surgeon's scalpel. Scarred, marked like the clay pans of Minnippi park from which the ochres came. Above right: Acrylic on callico. My body works on iron in the form of haemoglobin. It is rusting with age. I have left marks on the land; the land has left marks on me. We are mark makers. Ashes,to ashes; rust to dust, like the burnt land of Minnippi park after a bad bushfire has passed through it. Right: Self Portrait in Rust, 4. Random rust marks reflect the traces and marks of weathering on metal. Left: Acrylic on callico. Portrait in rust, 3. Rust can be red, orange or pink. So human, so Australian...so me. I have found it very difficult to position comments to any specific image on this blog page; just like life, I suppose. However, it was just as difficult to differentiate comments for each of these images, combination of acrylic base, natural pigments, pastels and acrylic paints on call...

Thomas Hastings and Faithful Ebzery were born to farmers in the small village of Shanagolden, County Limerick. They married in April 1850 in Mitchelstown, County Cork, three days before boarding the ship, Emigrant which left from Plymouth bound non-stop for Moreton Bay. He was 32 and she, 26. He gave his profession on their marriage certificate as being “late of the Irish Revenue Police” and she, a domestic. He resumed the title “farm labourer” label on his entry into Australia. They were most likely part of the Monteagle migration, Shanagolden being part of the estates of Thomas Rice in Western Limerick. They most likely took advantage of the altruism of Lord Monteagle and his second wife who saw migration as a solution to the plight of the Irish during the Potato Famine. Migration appealed to the adventurous and the desperate. As a Revenue policeman, Thomas would have trained in Dublin before being posted outside of his Limerick locality. The Revenue police were loathed as they were ...

Catherine Degnan was my great grandmother and I bear the name under which she died, Kathleen Hastings I had come to Chesterfield in May 2008 in search of memories of her in the land of her birth. I had her address from the 1861 English census, Church Alley, Chesterfield. Her father, according to the census, was a coal miner, originally from Roscommon, Ireland. I had had great trouble tracing Catherine to even being a “Degnan” by surname. She had given her name on her marriage certificate as Degnall. She maintained the “Degnall” on several birth certificates. Once she became Degnann and only once reverted to Degnan; never Dagnall as she had been called in Lancashire I was later to discover. She resumed Degnan once and that possibly after she had reconnected with her Chesterfield family. I only noticed that after I had down as a Degnan. Her maiden name is still given as Degnall on her death certificate. I had never thought that there could be such confusion over one’s own name. Confusion...

This work is part of the Lady of Shallot series that I completed for my MA at Monash in 2007. Pastel on paper. It is done with natural pigments, ochre and burnt wood taken from Minnippi Park. It reflects for me the park itself after the severe bushfire of '06 went through it. They are inspired by the dream like quality of the poem, "The Lady of Shallot"...the allegory of woman as prisoner, held by the unknown forces of a society outside of her control, a magic land where the only person who could have saved her only "sees" her on her death as she makes a valiant attempt to escape into the real world where people live, love and laugh. She, on the other hand, is tethered by the words in her head that tell her to stay in her tower and never look directly down onto the real world or "the curse will come upon her. she knows not what the curse may be and so she weaveth merrily, the Lady of Shallot." Tennyson. The poem, "The Lady of Shallot", by Alf...