24 25 ARTLINES 3 | 2025 I HAVE LOVED/I LOVE/I WILL LOVE I HAVE LOVED/I LOVE/I WILL LOVE IN CONVERSATION WITH PAT HOFFIE Ambitious and expansive, cross-cultural and interdisciplinary, Australian artist Pat Hoffie’s career spans more than five decades. Through her practice, Hoffie frequently addresses themes of power and postcolonial legacies, consistently centring aspects of the human experience. Recently, curator Grace Jeremy spoke with the artist about the new QAG exhibition ‘I have loved/I love/I will love’. Queensland-based artist Pat Hoffie’s ‘I have loved/I love/I will love’, now open at QAG, presents her first extensive body of work in intaglio printmaking as an immersive installation. Drawing inspiration from a long line of artists who have used the print medium to respond to human conflict and its consequences, Hoffie shares a selection of dramatic works on paper, transforming scenes she has witnessed in the news and on social media. By translating them to print, the artist hopes to encourage the slow viewing of such images, which, despite the significance of their content, are often only fleetingly glimpsed in today’s overwhelming digital landscape. Grace Jeremy: Pat, the works in your QAGOMA exhibition ‘I have loved/I love/ I will love’ stem from your residency at Cobalt Editions, Griffith University, in 2024, which you were invited to undertake by Dr Tim Mosely. Had you ever considered working with print before? Pat Hoffie: Right up to a month ago, I would have said ‘no’, but more recently, thinking back on past work, I realised I’ve been interested in different aspects of print media for some time. I mean, it’s no surprise that print has maintained a formidable grassroots, community and political edge throughout history, since the first book was printed in China around 868 CE. Since then, various incarnations of print technology have heralded times of enormous change. Without the invention of the printing press, for example, there would have been no Reformation in the fifteenth century. Changes in print and image production can be linked to subsequent shifts in world orders. When colour laser copiers were first introduced in Australia in the late 1980s, I was offered an artist-in-residency opportunity at Canon’s Brisbane-based office. My exhibition ‘Gender/Nature/Culture’ was one of the outcomes. Held at CACSA [Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, Adelaide] in 1989, it responded to the influence of the so-called Golden Age of advertising in commercial print media and publishing that had determined stereotypical gender roles. That same year, I worked with fax machines in a two-way performance with Japanese-based artist Akira Komoto, for the ‘Eastern Ways, Western Means’ exhibition at QAG. For ‘Home and Away’ at the IMA [Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane] in 1990, I used computer prints in an installation that addressed Australia’s relationship to the United States during the Gulf War — the international conflict triggered by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. My installation for the ‘Instant Imaging’ exhibition at QAG in 1991 highlighted the close association of computer imaging technology with weapon development in ‘smart bombs’ during that conflict. Opposite and above Pat Hoffie / Images from ‘I have loved/I love/I will love’, 2025 / Courtesy: The artist / © Pat Hoffie / Photographs: Nina White
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