Following a workshop at our Braidwood studio by visiting Scotland-based artist, Sarah Ross-Thompson, I decided that a collagraph would be a great way to depict the construction of an Indonesian fishing boat. This print has been made in response to one by a Melbourne artist for a joint exhibition called “RSVP” at Firestation and Southern Highlands Printmakers. The subject is SIEV 221, the boat filled with refugees which tragically smashed onto the Christmas Island rocks in 2010. The print is timed to coincide with Prime Minister, Scott Morrison’s, recent announcement that refugees “medivacced” out of Nauru and Manus Island would end up in Australia’s former penal colony on Christmas Island. It depicts a snow dome containing the wreckage of the boat, the interior of a lung and an allusion to the migration of peoples out of Africa 60,000 years ago.
