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Dunes and Fence
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."

Dunes and Fence - No. 20

The European approach to land use has been disastrous to the Australian landscape. Land clearing and habitat destruction has left a legacy of extinction and soil degradation. The fence in this view has been erected to prevent people from trampling the fragile vegetation that holds the sandy dunes together.

In 1770 Captain Cook claimed Eastern Australia as dominion land in the name of his sovereign, King George III. Since settlement, rights to use the land have been granted by the Governor as representative of the Crown. To maintain a land claim it is necessary to carry out certain improvements and produce an economic benefit. Aboriginal people were not considered to have a prior claim to the land since they did not assert ownership by building villages, clearing the land and erecting fences. The land had been taken by occupation rather than military conquest and it was considered to be terra nullius, land without owners.

For 40000 years the land has been integral to the spiritual identity of the Aboriginal people. They had no broad scale agriculture but instead relied on a sustainable harvest of the native flora and fauna. They maintained a way of life that did not claim dominion over nature. At the time of settlement there were 500 indigenous nations with distinct languages, legal systems and territories. After settlement the dispossessed Aboriginal people were left stateless, and as late as 1968 they had no citizenship rights and were not counted in the government census.

In 1992 the High Court finally recognised that the indigenous people had been wrongly dispossessed. Native title now allows some land rights to the Aboriginal people.

Tom Kristensen
October 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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