Exhibition at Gaffa Gallery, Clarence Street, Sydney
February 2016
The heart is the popular source and symbol of love but also a portent of mortality. It can be stopped, started, dissected reconstructed. Its pulse tells us we are alive, racing when we are excited, faltering when we are weak. Symbolically it unites us with others as friends and lovers. Its warmth spreads through our bodies, its shape and beat move us.
A popular image in art and kitsch and chocolate, the heart was considered the seat of all emotions. Early medical ideas saw it as the source of the body’s heat and we now know it to be the organ that circulates our blood and sustains life. The many expressions that include heart show how central it is to our lives and culture: heart’s desire, break my heart, sob my heart out, dear heart, do your heart good, eat your heart out, have a heart, heart attack, heart chakra, heartbeat, heart murmur and so on.
This exhibition explores the many layers of meaning of heart through a selection of editions of etchings, aquatint, linocut and woodblock prints. Some of the print series have been bound into editions of small books and others made into zines and cards. They are listed in the Murmurs of the Heart Catalogue.
Alex Byrne Printmaker 