A subtle artistic intervention that reclaimed the army’s war maps.

Nick Miller, The Age, 12 May 2022.

At first glance they’re simply beautiful maps: old-school military charts from the 1940s of the coast off south-east Queensland, printed in intricate detail and a calm, glowing blue. But look closer.

These monumental prints, made from hand-drawn and photo-lithographic processes on a metal plate, have erased the colonisers’ names for this country. They are replaced (in 19th-century typeface, to fool the eye), with Indigenous place names, part of the heritage of Quandamooka artist Megan Cope.

It’s a subtle, even charming way to erase or subvert colonialism. Cope says she loves, particularly, the irony that this kind of map was created by the military in fear of wartime invasion.

“Australia at the time [was] afraid of invasion by the Russians, the Japanese, but what does it mean to write over the Aboriginal place names and put in English names? That was really obvious.

“It made me want to change it back.”

Maps are “highly political documents”, says Cope. “They can be tools of dispossession.”

The older parish maps that she found during her research had actually used a lot of Aboriginal place names, but when the military survey came out, the world had changed. The colonial hold on the land was visible and starting to sprawl: “to really take a grip on the land”, says Cope.

But at the same time she wanted to make the series aesthetically beautiful, like the country itself.

“[These maps] capture in time the landscape. It’s history. All of this information is in there about borders, water sources, where are the bees, the banana plantations.”

The prints feature in a new exhibition of Australian printmaking at NGV Australia opening on Friday. It was born in 2017 when the Australian Print Workshop in Fitzroy established a new fellowship program, inviting artists who were renowned for their work in other media to explore print processes.

Among them was sculptor Patricia Piccinini, who created suites of colour prints, one of them featuring her Skywhale family.

And Shaun Gladwell, best known for his video art, produced ambitious prints exploring street culture, technology and the physical limits of the body, experimenting with a 360-degree camera with innovative effect.

NGV’s curator of prints and drawings, Jessica Cole, says her organisation came on board as a co-commissioner with the workshop, aiming to create this exhibition and a catalogue to celebrate the fellowship program.

The show is a testament to the versatility and creativity of printmaking, says Cole.

“One of the things I love about it is the fact that all the artists used really only two types of printmaking technology, lithography or an etching press … but the range of outcomes and the diversity of the imagery is kind of startling,” she says.

“And it’s pushing their practice into new territory at the same time.”

Some artists had never tried printmaking, while others had dabbled and some were old hands. Piccinini was one of the former.

“It brought a whole new reading of her work for me … and it really does draw attention to her skill as a draughtsman.”

New Australian Printmaking is at NGV Australia from May 13 to September 11.