jo mcintyre's gallery

The different galleries in this website are:

Crunch Time for the Kimberley

This Gallery is my perception of the impact of an LNG Processing plant and precinct on the fragile West Kimberley coast, 60 k north of the beautiful town of Broome in Western Australia.

The Premier of Western Australia and the Federal Minister for Resources and Energy, have been trying to fast track the Woodside LNG plant proposed for the James Price Point site for almost two years.

I set out to show what would be lost, and what the aftermath would be like. I've introduced these sections with short texts. I conclude with a plea to protect this environmental and living cultural treasure so that its unique biodiversity, on land and sea, is undisturbed and future generations can experience the joy and wonder of an unspoiled, natural place.

In the course of this project I explored art materials and methods new to me, such as burning, spray painting, layering and texturing. Another emphasis was the use of digital imagery to enhance narrative, design and presentation for an exhibition at the end of 2009.

The brilliant lyrics of Joni Mitchell's Big Yellow Taxi rang in my ears throughout the year.

For a long time I sought a visual image for what is remarkable on the Kimberley coast. Eventually I found it in the 'perfect egg": an organic, interlocked, fragile and beautiful whole.

Once I had the concept of the perfect egg to convey the unique fragility, age and beauty of the threatened coastline, I could work on ideas and imagery for best communicating the impact of something totally alien on this unique environment.

The beautiful Kimberley egg is cracked, broken and abandoned by a smothering LNG monster, severing the precious creative snake, mutilating the wise owl, and causing the Kimberley rock faces to weep "like Niobe, all tears." Something like a comic strip or a picture book emerged through all this.

As mentioned, digital prints comprised a large part of my 2009 exhibition. These were A4 matte prints of images of all sizes made on paper, canvas and board using a variety of materials: Ink, pindan soil, sand, watercolour, pastel, layering, burning, among them.

Sometimes the image as printed captured what I was after. With many, however, I was unsatisfied and felt I needed time to reflect and then to try to improve them : to make them stronger, more readily understandable, more beautiful, more subtle, for example. I had to research further and explore and experiment with other versions.

In the course of this exploration I could paint or drew straight on to the print itself. If I did this, the initial image was subsumed and replaced by my new work. However, as I still had the digital reproduction of the first one on the computer I could, after a while, look at the original version as printed and subsequent versions as painted and printed and, with the assistance of trusted friends select what we judged the best to make up a group for the exhibition wall display.

With the exhibition over I was keen to include on this website a number of images that were not in the exhibition, for space or design reasons. These appear here on the website as nos.25 to 34, in two groupings.

Working back into prints has created challenges of terminology. With my husband Andrew Harrisson, who makes the prints, we have decided on the following:

Original : This is briefly described, e.g. mixed media on paper

Print Digital print of the original i.e. the print is a fair copy, untouched by the artist. A print may also be a detail of the original

Print of version 2 of an original. Each version has to have a new title.

Version 1, 2, 3 etc

Uniquely Broome

This Gallery shows some of the characters and characteristics of Broome which appeal to me the most.

Kimberley Sunsets

Kimberley sunsets are watched and enjoyed by hundreds of people and their companion pets on a daily basis. No two sunsets are ever the same. The shorebirds could vouch for that, but their attention is elsewhere.

Nature Triumphant

People who are too big for their boots should experience the vast powers of nature in the Kimberley. Huge tides, battering winds, deluges of rain, erosive forces and perfectly clear night skies all bring home how insignificant humans are in the scheme of things.

Social Comment

The subject-matter here is wide-ranging, with eggs, chooks, cats and dogs conveying my observations on life.