Gimme it Easy 2

Circa 1980
Screen print
Diptych: Left panel 46 x 33 centimeters, right panel 56 x 33 centimeters
Collection National Gallery of Australia

Gimme it Easy 2 added another aspect to a faltering relationship depicted in its predecessor, Gimme it Easy 1. A tidily dressed man in the cramped left panel looks disapprovingly at his partner in the larger right panel who appears in a bedroom strewn with clothes and haphazardly organised perfume bottles on the dresser. Unaware of his mood she seems happy to see him and it is her pleasure contrasted with his petulance that makes her a sympathetic figure.

This is the first print where I experimented with unequal panel proportions to deliberately isolate the man and portray the woman comfortable in her environment. It is also the first time I explored using an extended collaging technique within an editioned print run. The man has been printed on calico which gives him coarse granular texture while she has been printed onto white card giving her a crisper definition and cleaner chroma. The process is labour intensive but it delivers a physical presence to the regular flat surface of a screenprint. Some additional work has gone into overprinting the background with a high gloss ink thereby optically lifting the collaged figures even more from the picture plane.

Backgound of the screen prints 1977-1981