Daniel Moynihan’s current exhibition at Australian Galleries, Melbourne ‘Rare Sightings: Paintings 2006 – 2016’ showcases the artist’s richly complex and engaging paintings.
“In 1983 on the night after I first arrived in Paris, I quite spontaneously made a little drawing of a little Tasmanian Tiger wandering along a Paris street. I felt the isolation, or the abandonment, of the Tiger and myself was pretty well linked. It was really strange when I first got to Paris; everything was so different. It was so unusual —customs, attitude, street life was completely opposite to what I had ever dealt with. I felt quite strange, but enchanted by it. So I started really seriously walking the streets, looking, bringing Paris in. This notion of the Tiger just being a part of the work suddenly presented itself as a serious thing, because I felt very much connected to it, and it became a personalised image for me.
That is how I started using the Tiger, and from there it has grown into this continual fascination with the animal, but also what the animal brings, what the animal could be, what the animal was. The myth of the Tiger is also important — all the stories that surround it, the attitudes towards it in the past, the attitudes now, are all wrapped up and bound up in my interest in the work. This was when the initial Tigerman images emerged — the image changes from the Tigerman, representing the men who tried to eradicate the Tiger, to the Tiger itself.”
Excerpt from Daniel Moynihan interview with Dr Loris Button, 2016
In the following video Daniel Moynihan talks to Trouble Magazine about the fascinating process for printing one of his etchings.
Moynihan’s unique and deeply informed process of printmaking has evolved through 50 years of practice. He talks of his formative years in Melbourne, Udo Sellback and the formation of the Print Council of Australia (PCA), working at Atelier Lacourière et Frélaut in Paris, and more.
With thanks to Danny Moynihan & Loris Button.