In 1985, Andrea Callard invited me to edition a print. My work was in transition from small handheld objects, the ‘tools of the trade’, to larger objects. They referred to the body and were identifiable as domestic in nature. I covertly sourced material from scrapyards. I culled parts from obsolete appliances. New work came from salvaging components.

I was overcome by the scale of trash generated by the West. Our consumer society was obsessed with the new. I found it useful foraging for parts but the experience was one of sinking within an emergent crisis. 40 years later, the perpetual cycling of invention, obsolescence, and waste has increased unabated.

From the perspective of 2023, I imagine what I might have been thinking in the making of this print. The fulcrum of the whirlpool provided an image within which to signify a perpetual cycle of excess. Locked within the swirl are referential signs, or hieroglyphs, iterations of ‘tools of the trade’. Signs produced by the human hand with its primate thumb conjure the human desire to invent, control and consume.

I am not a print maker, in fact, this is the only print I have ever produced. My image making on paper has existed solely to notation within my notebooks. This image would have been iterated there.

It would have been Andrea’s gentle prodding and assist in transcribing those scribbles onto the screen that would have brought this small project to fruition. So, thank you, Andrea.

Ann Messner 2023