Linda Swinfield

Burial (G) rounds, 2025.

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Mono-type and photo silkscreen prints on various papers attached to board.
Series of print based objects, 2025.

various sizes 10-30cm each object.

My familial art-making research often takes me on walks in cemeteries where I collect grave flower detritus that are disintegrating on pathways (never off graves). I rescue them from ending up in the waterways, which can be an environmental hazard.
For several years now, I wash and print them in a slow and meditative process. Through the printmaking process, there is a physical layering and a visual burial and re-emergence.
In this series, I have paired the grave flower prints with silk-screened 19th-century newspaper articles that I collected during my research at various archives. The text used has a connection to areas where my family lived during this time.
Owning my family history has also revealed the nasty side of Australian collective history within these texts. You can read in my work about the “skirmishes’ with the natives, and for me this series has enabled me to begin the reveal of violence that took place in their backyards.

Linda Swinfield was born in Sydney and educated at Meadowbank TAFE, the College of Fine Art and Sydney University. Swinfield completed a Masters of Fine Art at the University of Newcastle in 2010. She has developed a career as a multimedia print maker and now lives and works in the Blue Mountains. Recent career highlights include being awarded a Highly Commended for the Blue Mountains Print Prize and the Australian winner of Print Day in May (Neil Wallace Award) in 2021 and she was a recipient of the 2022 Blue Mountains City of the Arts Trust Grant.