Jo Plank

Jo Plank is an emerging artist based in Melbourne whose practice traverses printmaking, drawing, and works on paper. Working predominantly with ink and pen on archival, found and Japanese papers, Plank creates intricate compositions through the accumulation of minute, repetitive marks. Her process is slow, ritualistic and meditative, with each line contributing to works that reveal their detail and emotional intensity through close looking. Often beginning with deeply personal experiences, her works transform private thoughts and emotions into restrained visual narratives that are at once autobiographical and universal. Repetition is central to this process, functioning both as a formal device and as a means of reflection. Each mark echoes the one before it while retaining its own subtle individuality.

Plank completed a Diploma of Visual Arts, majoring in printmaking and minoring in works on paper, before undertaking a residency at Rigalto Printmaking Studios in Umbria, Italy.

She has been selected as a finalist in the Fisher’s Ghost Art Award, Swan Hill Regional Art Prize, and Waverley Art Prize. Her artistic influences include Agnes Martin, Louise Bourgeois and Cy Twombly, whose approaches to repetition, gesture and the relationship between mark-making and lived experience resonate throughout her practice.