Textile-based art has been enjoying a renaissance after decades of being derided, ignored or ghettoised for being ‘craft’ or ‘Women’s work’, both terms of which are dismissive artworld shorthand for ‘not art’. Contemporary artists have been reinstating the importance of textiles by way of incredible force and ingenuity, and perhaps most importantly, an intelligent and methodical dismantling of established art world ‘rules’, as clung to by the boy’s club of 20th century painting. Thus textile-based art becomes a powerful and accessible agent in the examination of identity, society and politics. Textiles have grown to command a significant following, offering its own complex and distinctive lexicon, as capable of expression, nuance and polemic as any other media. This exhibition begins by taking textiles’ artistic legitimacy for granted, a point proven many times over throughout its long history, bringing together some of the best and brightest artists working in Australia today.
Featuring the work of Julie Bradley, Regi Cherini, Leah Emery, Marion Gaemers & Lynnette Griffiths, Emma Gardner, Hannah Gartside, Julia Gutman, Vivien Haley, Michelle Hamer, Talitha Kennedy, Sheree Kinlyside, Nicole O’Loughlin, Susan Peters Nampitjin, Ema Shin, Hiromi Tango, Sonia Ward, Jenny Watson, Paul Yore, Troy-Anthony Baylis and India Collins.
Curated by Jonathan McBurnie.
Artwork statement
I found my way (Handless Maiden)
My first memories of learning to stitch are of my father, who is a shearer. With what seemed to be a massive hooked needle, he would show me the technique for suturing skin back together if a sheep had been cut. I remember thinking it was so brutal yet practical. When I am stitching, I think of this puncturing and binding of one thing to another, and the force of the thread that holds my salvaged textiles together.
In this work, I was also thinking about transformation and growth. Cyanotype captures my body posed and still as the alchemy of chemicals react to the sun’s ultraviolet light. The finished print slips between the past and present, absence and presence, reality and representation. These slippages align with my interest in European Folklore tales that straddle fact and fiction. In my work, I reimagine feminine folklore heroines in feminist tales for the present.
