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Bulldozer, Woodblock Print
copyright Tom Kristensen, 2005

Tom Kristensen, born 1962, is a young artist from Australia who works in the tradition of Japanese woodblock printmaking. On this page, he writes about his latest print from the series "36 Views of Green Island ".

Here is the original text written by Tom Kristensen. Text and images are copyright protected and may not be used or distributed for other than private use without the prior consignment of the author/artist.

36 Views of Green Island

"These 36 views are presented in the Sosaku Hanga tradition: self-carved and hand printed, using Japanese tools, Japanese mulberry washi and traditional pigment colours. Each print is made from 4 to 6 blocks and printed in an edition of 25 copies."

Bulldozer - No. 19

Holiday housing covers the headland to the north of Green Island. During the land clearing and road works a large bulldozer was abandoned to the salty sea spray. Much has rusted away, but the tracks and sprockets remain, and the two arms that tilted the angle of the blade are left like cannons jutting into the sky. Perhaps the bulldozer was irretrievable. It rests at the bottom of a steep drop on a small beach hemmed in by rocks at either end. Perhaps it was left as a plaything for children. It speaks of the destruction of the natural environment and of the creation of suburbia. As a monument to power it is melting back into the landscape like the statue of Ozymandias.

Machinery has long featured in the Japanese woodblock print. With the drive for modernity in the 1860's all manner of contraptions found a place in the background of prints. Small technological objects like clocks and microscopes jostled alongside buggies and bicycles. The expanding network of telegraph poles soon sprung up within the picture. The power pole has endured as a Leitmotiv in the Japanese landscape print. In the steam age there was a specific genre depicting railways and steam trains, known as tetsudo-e.

During the Japan's military conquests in the 1890's, the public was supplied with propaganda prints depicting battle scenes, known as senso-e. These scenes often featured battleships and armaments exploding in the night sky. The most fervent tributes to agricultural machinery were made in Communist China, where the woodblock was used by Mao to manipulate communal aspirations. The landscape was seen as a source of endless bounty with tractors bringing in the bumper harvest.

Tom Kristensen
September 2005

More about Tom Kristensen

The artist was first discovered by Eric van den Ing, co-author of a classic ukiyo-e book "Beauty and Violence" and owner of Saru Gallery. After Eric van den Ing had placed Tom's woodblock prints on his online gallery, a few days later a collector had bought the whole set. Mr. van den Ing seems to have a "magic hand" for new artists. He was the first to introduce Paul Binnie in 2000 to a larger online community of friends of Japanese prints.

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