Standing Still at 1600 km/h

The title refers to the speed at which the Earth's surface rotates at the equator — the paradox of being stationary while moving. The print is a copper-plate etching, worked in line without applied gold leaf or aquatint tonal fields, and likely treats the conceit through landscape, figure or astronomical motif. Akino's etchings often hold this kind of quiet philosophical proposition behind ostensibly observational imagery, drawing on a sensibility shaped by her Kyoto training as much as by her Irish working life. Etching builds the image through sustained linear work — hard-ground line bitten by acid into the copper, sometimes supplemented by drypoint — and the resulting plate carries a density of mark that suits subjects of stillness, attention and slow time. Within her output at Graphic Studio Dublin the print sits among her conceptually titled etchings, which use reflective phrases to frame what would otherwise read as straightforward landscape imagery.