Tasmanian Tiger in Melbourne 1996

Summary

Daniel Moynihan studied printmaking and painting at Preston Technical College and RMIT University in the mid-1960s, including under Udo Sellback. He has honed his image-making skills over the subsequent five decades, during which he has also lived and worked in Paris. Since the early 1970s, Moynihan has had an enduring fascination with the thylacine, that haunting, almost mythical, creature writ large on Australia’s list of fauna extinctions. In part, this interest was inspired by John Gould’s 19th-century lithographs of Tasmanian animals. Created in 1996, this linocut, which has been printed on heavy magnani paper, shows the recurring motif of the thylacine as an urban interloper, with the skyline of Melbourne clearly evident across the waters of the Yarra. The elusive animal’s out-of-placeness perhaps points to both the ongoing rumours of its survival and to the adaptiveness required by any species to survive. The work was purchased directly from the artist through the City of Melbourne’s Contemporary Art Acquisitions Panel in 2012.