ReCover- a textile response
I don't know if I am tempting fate or there is such a thing but this will be the third time that this exhibition has been advertised to open. Varying lockdowns have forced cancellation on this event. Third time lucky !!!!! But as Australia suffers under the burden of the strain of the Covid Omicron Virus the supply chain, businesses and of course the hospital system are bordering on breaking point. It is not if we catch this strain it is almost when. I really want to get up to Sydney to hang this show and attend the opening at 4.pm on Saturday 29 January. The exhibition is at Gallery 76 Queen Street Concord west. It is the headquarters of the NSW Embroidery Guild.
The work will not be in the main gallery but in the side gallery. It is actually a wide passageway but will really suit my large response pieces. Most of them are over 100 centimetres wide and 160 in length. I am hoping they will move and sway as the the people walk by.
My artist statement reads:
"ReCOVER’ is a textile and photographic response to the bushfire damage and recovery, including the area near Tianjara in the Shoalhaven. Through the alchemy of ecological contact printing with plants and slow, meditative stitching on recycled cloth the experience of my crossings over this landscape is traced and recalled. In this layering of walking, attending and making, the boundaries between self and the world soften and, at times, dissolve to the point of disappearance.
The large textile responsive pieces can be rolled or hung; laid flat; folded as a vessel for gathering and carrying or used to cloak the body."
In March 2020 I travelled to the fire ground around Tianjara Falls in Morton National Park to photograph and ‘map’ the recovery of the bush. After a trip up the Eastern Coast earlier in the year I was inspired to create a series of large textiles pieces. These larger works on recycled bed ‘covers’ uses an ecological contact print process to create the background. The printed textiles were then embellished with stitches emulating the recovery processes and the formation of new life. Each piece determines a differing impression of my interpretation of the ‘ReCovery’ process.
The stitching approach I refer to as ‘inefficient stitching’. This is a thread reproduction of the ‘inefficient mapping’ I did at the recovering fire ground in Morton National Park. My mapping or mark making noted the brightness of the new leaves in the late afternoon sunshine, the whispering of the wind or the regrowth and movement of the ground cover.
