‘Dear Gilbert,….’ (Song for the Ichthyologist)

whitley-blocks.jpg

For some years the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT) held several hundred old letterpress blocks of fishes, maps and marine life, which were originally from the Australian Museum in Sydney and formed part of a larger collection dedicated to the world of Gilbert Percy Whitley, Ichthyologist and later Curator of Fishes at the museum until 1964.

This collection included numerous paper publications, journals, books, drawings, slides and diaries by Whitley. He also created beautifully rendered pen and ink drawings of fishes created to scale containing instructions to the block-makers, who then made letterpress blocks from these images. The blocks were printed as illustrations in Whitley’s published papers.

Jacqueline Gribbin has revived these now obsolete blocks. Through a series of prints, which incorporate the images from the blocks, Gribbin has connected not only with Whitley’s prodigious scientific output and passion for all things fishy, but also his cheeky humour, which is inherent in his notes and diaries. The prints – etchings and woodblocks – are a melding of Gribbin’s created marine environments with Whitley’s scientific work.

Intaglio and relief prints

Water-based woodblock (mokuhanga) and relief prints

Billfish I, II, III, IV are unique works using a combination of water-based woodblock and relief printing.

©JacquelineFGribbin2024