Beetle Puppet

A solar plate (photopolymer) etching, the technique exposes a UV-sensitive polymer plate through a positive image and is bitten in water rather than acid, giving Imazu a fine continuous-tone line well suited to drawn or photographed sources. The print depicts a beetle rendered as a small string-or-stick puppet — the carapace and legs articulated at visible joints, perhaps suspended on threads or held on a rod — turning a real creature from the garden into a theatrical object. The conceit is characteristic of her practice: the insect is observed with entomological care and then tipped, by one structural detail, into folk-tale or shadow-theatre. The Insects tag situates the image within her sustained series of small-format intaglio portraits of Australian backyard fauna, which she frames as tiny neighbours rather than specimens.