Solo Exhibition - Return Of The Great White Hunter
29 May – 22 June 2024
OPENING EVENT Friday 31st May 5:30pm – To be opened by Dr Mary Knights [Senior Curator of Art, Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery]
Despard Gallery is proud to present Return Of The Great White Hunter, solo exhibition by renowned Tasmanian printmaker Milan Milojevic.
With a highly celebrated career, Milojevic is recognised as a principal figure in the development and adoption of digital processes within contemporary printmaking. During his thirty-three year career as an academic, Milojevic was the head of the printmaking department at the University of Tasmania, School of Creative Arts, as well as being Chief Investigator for the Digital Art Research Facility.
Milojevic continues to be a leader in the evolving discipline of digital printmaking, his work collaging together imaginary worlds that echo the traditions of 18th and 19th century European wood block designs along with symbols of native Tasmanian fauna and flora. Brought to life through archival inkjet prints, then overlayed with traditional printmaking techniques, Milojevic’s visual language is a unique combination of diagrammatic illustration, vibrant colour and poignant symbolism. Akin to early biology encyclopaedias or museological records, each work becomes a glossary of an alternate natural history, combining contemporary and historical references with his cross-cultural heritage.
Return Of The Great White Hunter presents a poignant new suite of works by Milojevic that critiques the Age of Discovery and the conquest of exotic new worlds during the 18th and 19th Century. This includes engravings and wood cuts that recorded the exploration of Terra Australis Incognita and the destructive cycle of discovery, colonisation and possession. Included in this new suite of works, are a set of prints that references the print folios of convict artist Joseph Lycett 1774-1878, published in book format in 1824/25, which were intended to be a history of the discovery, settlement and progress in the new colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land.
Click here to read about the origins of The Great White Hunter.
Click here to request a catalogue of exhibition images for Milan Milojevic.
Click here to request virtual viewing room catalogue for Milan Milojevic