TOM MAGUIRE
After Life
This body of work explores the delicate balance between preservation and loss within the natural environment. Through my practice, I reflect on the quiet tension between human intervention and ecological resilience. The ways in which we both nurture and disrupt the landscapes we inhabit.
Using plant cuttings gathered during my time working in the Blue Mountains, I create linocut pressings that serve as tributes to the plants that have been removed. Each impression becomes a form of memorial, translating what has been lost into a tactile presence. The act of carving and printing is both a gesture of mourning and of celebration, transforming absence into remembrance and offering the plants a symbolic afterlife.
In this process, I consider how art can hold space for what no longer exists, how printmaking can become an archive of fleeting natural forms. The resulting works invite viewers to contemplate cycles of growth and decay, and to question our relationship with the environments we alter, protect, and depend upon.
