Weathering a Life

'Weathering a Life’ opened on Saturday 27 January. It was a hot day in Sydney but the Gallery was full of excited and enquiring people. In the main Gallery is collaboration between sisters Jillian Culey and Carolyn Dance. The woven forms in this exhibition are an attempt to interpret existing landscapes, to imagine new ones and to contemplate our place within them... the focus is on handmade, sustainable and fair-trade creations.

This is interesting as my blurb reads ‘my artwork combines the visuals and stories of place and memory. The outlines and shapes I see in the landscape fascinate me. I look for signs of the passage of time and the fragility in things, through their breakdown and evolution from weathering and ageing.’

So the theme of landscape was evident as well as sustainability. My textiles are created on recycled cloth that have been over and over eco dyed. They were the wrappings used for my contact eco prints and most are at least 10 years old. The patching and restitching becomes a metaphor of repair of our fragile environment, created and impacted by human activity or aspects of my life as I age. They are soft and worn and have that perfect intrinsic beauty that comes with age, oxidation and overdying. The simple stitch lines aligned to landscape adds to the weathering and a life lived.

I bought a basket and I look forward to having it in my home. In my opening speech I mentioned that my first exhibition as coiling and basketry. This was at least thirty years ago and I knew how their fingers must feel after a session of work.

Alongside my textiles I decided to mount my ‘weathering’ drawings that were not sold at the exhibition in Strathnairn. The whole concept was the same and I actually used a similar text in both exhibitions. ‘Weathering a life’ came into being with a series of collographs and drawings. My art explores a connection to place and the environment and my interpretation of erosion and disintegration. As well as being a contemplation of the physical weathering in the environment – my artwork was a reflection on the passage of time and fragility through evolution from weathering and ageing; a parallel landscape of outer and inner worlds.