G. W. Bot is the signature name for the Australian artist Christine Grishin, nee Christine Falkland, who has been a full-time artist for more than 30 years. She is a printmaker, sculptor, painter and graphic artist who works with her own shapes and glyphs to represent the landscapes she loves. Since 1985 her primary work is

linocut Linocut, also known as lino print, lino printing or linoleum art, is a printmaking technique, a variant of woodcut in which a sheet of linoleum (sometimes mounted on a wooden block) is used for a relief surface. A design is cut into the linoleum s ...

printing.G W Bot Garden of Possibilities, exhibition brochure, 7 June – 21 September 2003, Canberra Museum and Gallery, Canberra, ACT, Australia. She is known nationally and internationally from about 50 solo exhibitions, and more than 200 mixed, group exhibitions. Her work is held in more than 100 art collections including: the National Gallery of Australia; the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

; The

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

, London; the Bibliotheque National,

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

; The Museum of Modern Art, Osaka, Japan; and the Fogg Museum at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...

Biography

Bot was born 1954 in

Quetta, Pakistan Quetta (; ur, ; ; ps, کوټه‎) is the tenth most populous city in Pakistan with a population of over 1.1 million. It is situated in south-west of the country close to the International border with Afghanistan. It is the capital of th ...

, of Australian parents, and later travelled widely with them. She studied art in London, Paris and Australia and graduated from the

Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public research university located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton encompasses seven teaching and research colleges, in addition to several national academies and ...

in 1982. She has had residencies at Bundanon and Riversdale, NSW, properties Arthur Boyd left to Australians. Bot lives in

Canberra Canberra ( ) is the capital city of Australia. Founded following the federation of the colonies of Australia as the seat of government for the new nation, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The ci ...

surrounded by gardens and views into bush land, which inspire the shapes and glyphs that define her work. She has a studio at the Strathnairn Arts Association in Holt, ACT. Like many female artists who have experienced motherhood, Bot felt isolation when the children were young. Her choice of linocuts facilitated working on a kitchen table, and she expanded her skills and scope of work during this domestic period. She also loves poetry and draws on it for much of her work. She adopted the name G. W. Bot because she wanted a totem and there are many wombats on the property where she lives. The early French explorers recorded the name for the animal as ''le Grand Wam Bot'' and from this she derived G. W. Bot.

Work

Bot has worked in many mediums:

gouache Gouache (; ), body color, or opaque watercolor is a water-medium paint consisting of natural pigment, water, a binding agent (usually gum arabic or dextrin), and sometimes additional inert material. Gouache is designed to be opaque. Gouache h ...

and

watercolour Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (British English; see spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin ''aqua'' "water"), is a painting method”Watercolor may be as old as art itself, going back to t ...

, oils and tempura, intaglio,

lithography Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German a ...

, and relief printing, but mainly

. Bot has stated: “Like the unexplored and unmapped Australian landscape, the linocut is an unchartered medium without codified orthodoxies. It can detail a preciousness and intricate fragility like the spikes of a banksia or a vast monotony of tone.” In the 1980s her works were figurative. But then in the 1990s Bot began to evolve the glyphs that represent for her the metaphysical and spiritual elements of landscape. She also began to use layering, and sometimes added

collage Collage (, from the french: coller, "to glue" or "to stick together";) is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. ...

or textiles to her works. For Bot the glyphs are a system of marks, a language, that have evolved from many rough sketches of the landscape. Typically, Bot’s work features strong silhouettes, a natural colour palette, course visual texture and complex, rhythmic patterns and glyphs. These glyphs are symbols of natural elements. She credits Aboriginal artist

Rover Thomas Rover Thomas Joolama (1926 – 11 April 1998), known as Rover Thomas, was a Wangkajunga and Kukatja Aboriginal Australian artist. Early life Rover Thomas was born in 1926 near Gunawaggii, at Well 33 on the Canning Stock Route, in the Great ...

with teaching her about black in the Australian landscape. After a fire, the black land bursts into bloom, so black is the colour not of death but of regeneration. In 2013 Bot began to sculpt glyphs in steel and ''Treaty Glyphs (2013)'' and ''Glyphs – Between Worlds (201)'' and were shown in two separate exhibitions''.'' She makes them from plain carbon steel. After cutting and smoothing the sculptures, she puts them into the ground to rust to a ruby-brown colour. They are then bolted to a backing, standing out slightly to cast their shadows.

Ethos

During the COVID-19 pandemic (2020) she was interviewed at Strathnairn Arts Association in Canberra, ACT, Australia:

“What would you most like people to know about your Arts practice? "Art matters – art is a voice that reaches out to others so that they can see the world again as if for the first time. Like a child who sees the moon and is so overcome that they need to share the experience with others just in case we hadn’t ever seen the moon. In surreal times – like this COVID-19 pandemic – we all perhaps need to hear the voice of the child/artist for inspiration, for hope, for sanity and survival.“

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bot, G. W. 1954 births Living people 20th-century Australian women artists 20th-century Australian artists 21st-century Australian women artists 21st-century Australian artists Artists from the Australian Capital Territory Australian women painters Australian women sculptors Australian National University alumni Pseudonymous artists