Adelaide artist Olga Sankey has been making and exhibiting print-based works for more than 30 years. Her work is held in major public collections in Australia and overseas. Originally trained in lithography and intaglio printmaking in Adelaide and later in Urbino, Italy, she has produced etchings, photopolymer prints and lithographs, and since the early 2000s has embraced digital technology. This has enabled printing onto surfaces other than paper and the creation of large format works and composite images. She is interested in the relationship of image and text, and working digitally has also allowed her to combine textual fragments with both original and appropriated imagery.

So much of our understanding of our world comes via print, and increasingly from online illuminated words and images. We have been accustomed to believe what we read – from stories in the first printed book, the Bible, to Wikipedia entries. My work questions these certainties by focusing on how they are constructed: through layers and compilations of fragments that are so easily manipulated, misread and misconstrued. 

March 2016