Helen Wright
The fragile and the fury 2021
woodcut; A/P
Courtesy of the artist, Bett Gallery, Hobart,
and Niagara Galleries, Melbourne

Helen Wright
The fragile and the fury 2021
woodcut; A/P
Courtesy of the artist, Bett Gallery, Hobart,
and Niagara Galleries, Melbourne


Helen Wright


Helen Wright

The fragile and the fury 2021
woodcut; A/P
Courtesy of the artist, Bett Gallery, Hobart,
and Niagara Galleries, Melbourne

Artist statement:

The fragile and the fury came from an interpretive collaboration with the Australian writer, Rachel Leary. Our shared concern about habitat destruction was evident from our earliest discussions. Rachel’s powerful and emotive writing about native forest clear-felling, entitled Dozer, formed the catalyst for my image. It is an act of destruction very familiar and very distressing for us both.

The striking, characteristically graphic power of woodcut seemed a fitting way to respond visually to the power of the text.

In The fragile and the fury I explicitly wanted to capture the feeling of a potent assault on the landscape. To do this I have created a whopping, raw visual assault made possible by the analogue process of dynamic cutting together with large solid areas of black ink, pressed into a receptive paper surface that is subjected to forceful pressure.