Rising Lines ︎︎︎ Amber Smith, Laurie Oxenford, Fiona Lee, Katey O’Sullivan, Colin Maier and Penne Thornton + Ranch Pressing (Ed.)
Rising Lines
Ed. Ranch Pressing with Amber Smith, Laurie Oxenford, Katey O’Sullivan, Fiona Lee, Colin Maier and Penne Thornton
Saddle stitched, risograph publication printed + bound by Ranch Pressing (AU)
72 pages + colour photograph
28 x 21.5cms
Edition of 30
ISBN 978-1-7636302-4-6
Rising Lines was supported by the City of Greater Geelong
May 2026
AU$55 + postage. Please contact Ranch Pressing to order your editioned copy.
Ed. Ranch Pressing with Amber Smith, Laurie Oxenford, Katey O’Sullivan, Fiona Lee, Colin Maier and Penne Thornton
Saddle stitched, risograph publication printed + bound by Ranch Pressing (AU)
72 pages + colour photograph
28 x 21.5cms
Edition of 30
ISBN 978-1-7636302-4-6
Rising Lines was supported by the City of Greater Geelong
May 2026
AU$55 + postage. Please contact Ranch Pressing to order your editioned copy.
In response to the floods in northeast Australia in 2022, artist Katey O’Sullivan made a body of work titled A Line Made by Something Else. Awash in news coverage of the catastrophic weather event, O’Sullivan began an investigation into the aesthetic particulars of the flooding.
O’Sullivan created a series of dipped objects—works marked with the waterline seen around the flooded houses and across the piles of destroyed and discarded belongings, heaped in piles outside evacuated homes—The objects were soaked in inky water for the same period that homes in Lismore were inundated. She writes,
The floodwaters created multiple versions of line. While the water was high, there was the waterline, a demarcation of what was underwater and what the eye could see above that line. There were watermarks, lines of measurement, timelines, communication lines, and rows of soggy possessions lining the streets. The list seemed endless.
The floodwaters created multiple versions of line. While the water was high, there was the waterline, a demarcation of what was underwater and what the eye could see above that line. There were watermarks, lines of measurement, timelines, communication lines, and rows of soggy possessions lining the streets. The list seemed endless.
This publication continues O’Sullivan’s inquiry through the commissioning of five new text works by artists Fiona Lee, Penne Thornton, Laurie Oxenford, Amber Smith and O’Sullivan. The commissioned works explore connection and inundation; physical, psychological, inherited, longed for and feared. They appear here, fragmented and rethreaded, converging on one another, the way that fears, lives, losses and stories do.
After the flood, there is fear, both above and below the line. The tide continues to rise with the temperature, and we are softly paralysed imagining our own extinction. We do very little. This book marks the current tide line as we mourn ourselves as future ghosts adrift in the present.
After the flood, there is fear, both above and below the line. The tide continues to rise with the temperature, and we are softly paralysed imagining our own extinction. We do very little. This book marks the current tide line as we mourn ourselves as future ghosts adrift in the present.