Fresh Material: New Australian Textile Art by Galleries, Townsville City Council

F R E S H M AT E R I A L : NE W AU S T R A L I A N TEXTILE ART

Cover: Jenny Watson Sunshine of your love, 2020 Acrylic on French cotton and tapestry template 140 x 137 cm; 39 x 31 cm Image courtesy of Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery

Project listings: Publisher Perc Tucker Regional Gallery Townsville City Council PO Box 1268 Townsville City, Queensland, 4810 galleries@townsville.qld.gov.au ©Galleries, Townsville City Council, and respective artists and authors, 2020 ISBN: 978-0-949461-53-7 Published on the occasion of Fresh Material: New Australian Textile Art Acknowledgement of Country Townsville City Council acknowledges the Wulgurukaba of Gurambilbarra and Yunbenun, Bindal, Gugu Badhun and Nywaigi as the Traditional Owners of this land. We pay our respects to their cultures, their ancestors and their Elders – past and present – and all future generations.

Artists Troy-Anthony Baylis Julie Bradley Regi Cherini India Collins Leah Emery Marion Gaemers Emma Gardner

Hannah Gartside Lynnette Griffiths 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

Publication and Design Development Tara Henderson Contributing Authors Laini Burton Jonathan McBurnie

Artwork documentation Alex Chomicz Pierce Eldridge Simon Hewson Ian Hobbs Louis Lim

Geoff Newton Thomas Oliver Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery Rabin Sherchan Darren Tanny Tan Robyn Volker

Galleries Team Judith Jensen Tanya Tanner Rachel Cunningham Jo Lankester Jonathan Brown Leonardo Valero Caitlin Dobson Lucy Belle Tesoriero Chloe Lindo Michael Favot Ashleigh Peters Veerle Janssens Sascha Millard Rabin Sherchan Wren Moore Saressa Oui

Team Manager Arts Visual and Performing Senior Public Art Officer Senior Education and Programs Officer Creative Director Education and Programs Officer Exhibitions Officer Public Art Officer Curatorial Assistant Curatorial Assistant Exhibitions Assistant Education and Programs Assistant Gallery Assistant Gallery Assistant Gallery Assistant Gallery Assistant Gallery Trainee

FR ESH M ATERI AL : N E W AU S TRAL I AN TE XTI L E ART Perc Tucker Regional Gallery

Showing 10 December 2021 – 6 February 2022

CO N TE N TS

Introduction ��1 Fresh Material: New Australian Textile Art ��2 Troy-Anthony Baylis ��7 Julie Bradley ��9 Regi Cherini ��11 India Collins ��13 Leah Emery ��15 Marion Gaemers & LynnetteGriffiths ��17 Emma Gardner ��19 Hannah Gartside ��21 Julia Gutman ��23 Vivien Haley ��25 Michelle Hamer ��27 Talitha Kennedy ��29 Sheree Kinlyside ��31 Susan Peters Nampitjin ��33 Nicole O’Loughlin ��35 Ema Shin ��37 Sonia Ward ��41 Jenny Watson ��43 Paul Yore ��45 List of works ��46

INTRODUCTION 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’. This resurgence is largely due to the embrace of Women and Queer artists seeking to reclaim artistic disciplines frequently dismissed by the prevailing patriarchy of the art world for its perceived femininity. These 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 the 20th century. Thus textile-based art becomes a powerful and accessible agent in the examination of identity, society and politics. As artists such as Gunta Stölzl, Louise Bourgeois, Sheila Hicks and Nancy Grossman have proven, textile art is not so easily routed or dismissed; these artists helped cement textiles into the visual arts context as a radical and stimulating alternative throughout a century of despotic gatekeeping and sectarian sexism, despite massive societal change. Textiles have grown to command a significant following in a world of a billion paintings, offering its own complex and distinctive lexicon, as capable of expression, nuance and polemic as any other media. Australia is fortunate to be gifted with an array of intelligent, engaging, challenging and skilled artists working with textiles. This exhibition begins by taking textiles’ artistic legitimacy for granted, a point proven many times over throughout its long history, and Fresh Material brings together twenty of the best and brightest artists working in Australia today. Approaching this exhibition was an exciting proposition, and was incredibly hard to contain to twenty artists. Bringing together emerging and early career artists with gallery veterans creates a compelling dialogue between backgrounds, cultures and generations, and I think you’ll agree that the results are equally exciting. I would like to thank the artists for so enthusiastically launching into this project. Having the opportunity, on the Gallery’s fortieth year, to create such an exciting mix of artists drawn from our own community and abroad speaks to the team’s continuing mission to provide the highest-level programming and opportunities for artists of all stripes. What better way to end the year than on such a high note?

J O N AT H A N M C B U R NIE, CUR AT O R

F RESH MATERIAL: NEW AUSTRALIAN TEXTILE ART Textile-based arts have long occupied vexed territory, characterised as being between binaries such as high and low art, amateur or professional practice, and craft or hobby. As a genre, it is often seen to sit on the fault lines of fine art, fashion and dress. In this ‘and/or’ space, textile art affects a kind of rupture to its attendant binaries where it can eschew rigidly defined classifications through its tendency toward cross-pollination. And, although it holds a well-documented position at the sidelines of the art historical canon, textile art has the distinct advantage of crossing class divisions even while being implicated within its own histories of gendered and racialised labour. Its broad range of mediums, techniques and processes make textile art a genuinely democratic form of material language. The far-reaching historical and cultural entanglements of textile art stretch back thousands of years. The story of textile arts is, quite simply, the story of human civilisation. Therefore, it has been subject to assimilation and adaptation, economics and politics, power, and the heavy legacy of empire. Textile’s ability to retain traces of the artist’s hand lends it an auratic quality, a concept championed by William Morris, the British textile designer, poet and artist who became the figurehead of the British Arts and Crafts Movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Although Morris & Co. may be known for professionalising textile art, it had been deployed by the women’s suffrage movement for strategic political ends to galvanise support and draw attention to issues of inequality. Textile arts returned as a tour de force within the early 20th Century Bauhaus school of applied arts, architecture and design. The Bauhaus principles of collaboration, innovation, and bringing art into everyday life reflect textiles’ history which echoes these same production methods. Textile art has long been a form of socialisation and a way to disseminate cultural knowledge. Despite its progressive aims, the Bauhaus school’s weaving workshop was assigned to women students, repeating textile arts’ historical classification as gendered labour. Today, we celebrate those Bauhaus artists – women such as Anni Albers, Otti Berger, Margarete Köhler, Marli Ehrman, Gunta Stölzl and Sheila Hicks – whose works left an indelible mark on the school’s legacy. In more recent history, the political movement of Second Wave Feminism saw textile-based arts thrive, entering the era of contemporary art. In her revolutionary 1984 book The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine, feminist art historian Rozsika Parker addressed the “historical hierarchical division of the arts into fine arts and craft as a major force in the marginalisation of women’s work”. At the time, Parker’s work not only underscored how embroidery coincided with constructions of femininity but also sought to “break down boundaries between different forms of creative expression”. Arguably, this struggle to receive recognition has remained for many textile-based artists.

However, it is important to note that this brief patchwork history of textile-based arts represents a decidedly Western record. Conceptions of textile art and all other contemporary art genres have been destabilised by bodies of thought such as postcolonialism and decolonisation. We have recently witnessed textile art become disentangled from EuroAmerican markets and taste, and embrace non-Western histories, legacies, and narratives. Now, as it did in the 2000s, we see textile art buoyed by institutional attention. Its presence in national and international galleries has allowed textile artists to publicly tackle some of the most pressing global crises of our time. One might think of artists such as El Anatsui, whose metal textiles acknowledge the history and abuses of the African slave trade, or Nick Cave, whose sculptural sound suits are worn to obscure race, gender, and class to protect the wearer’s identity. Pioneering artist and activist Faith Ringgold’s quilts evoke the traditions and stories of African American life, while Doh Ho Suh’s monumental diaphanous architectural spaces question notions of home, identity, migration, and travel. Australia has its own cache of significant textile artists who respond to personal and collective issues: Wiradjuri woman Karla Dickins’ textiles and poems address complex and overlapping issues of racism, domestic life, motherhood and addiction; Sydney artist Gerwyn Davies shrouds himself in flamboyant, playful costumes, drawing attention to how we simultaneously conceal and construct our identities; Khadim Ali’s rich tapestries seduce the viewer, only to reveal the horrors of war; Waanyi man Gordon Hookey’s banners inspired by Aboriginal histories recall the long history of textile used for protest purposes; and, Pia Interlandi’s textile research has led her to create bio-degradable burial garments. This small sample, along with the artists showcased in Fresh Material: New Australian Textile Art, makes the impact of textile arts apparent in connecting us with contemporary life and politics. Although textile art and artists acknowledge the contingencies within which they practice, subject to the social, cultural, and political exigencies of the time, the legitimisation of textile art through capricious trends has not diminished its growing significance as an art form. Its uninhibited approach to diverse mediums provides a model for inclusivity and exemplifies methods of cross-pollination that abound in contemporary art. Through observing the work made by the artists of Fresh Material: New Australian Textile Art, a viewer might identify three specific threads of inquiry. They are, gender and identity, memory and belonging, and space and place.

GENDER AND IDENTITY Examining its historical associations with gendered labour, many of the artists in Fresh Material: New Australian Textile Art continue the work that the 70s feminists began, revealing the ongoing gender and power inequities that permeate various aspects of their lives. Joseph McBrinn’s 2021 publication Queering the Subversive Stitch: Men and the Culture of Needlework offers a twenty-first-century addition to textile histories and directly responds to Parker’s pioneering text The Subversive Stitch. Where Parker outlines “both the negative and positive effects of [embroidery’s] position in relation to the social structuring of sex difference and art practice”, McBrinn broadens the gendered reading of needlework, embroidery, lacemaking, rag-rug making, cross-stitch and petit-point to establish the construction of masculinities and its relationship to textile-based arts. As with Parker, McBrinn seeks to expand not only the scholarship but the appreciation of textile-based arts and, in doing so, add to Parker’s legacy of uncovering the complex gendered histories of textile art. As Parker’s Foreword declares, embroidery – and here by extension, all textile-based arts – “provided a weapon of resistance to the constraints of femininity”. The fluidity and expansion of gender categories today means that textile arts can address the oppressive constraints of gender to which so many have been tethered. MEMORY AND BELONGING Because of their tactility and closeness to the body, textiles can sustain and communicate memory, mourning, and memorialisation. Their connection to personal and collective histories often allow us to cross space and time. Marius Kwint, in Material Memories: Design and Evocation, claims there are three ways in which objects serve memory. That is, to: “furnish recollection; they constitute our picture of the past”; “stimulate remembering … bringing back experiences which otherwise would have remained dormant, repressed or forgotten”; and, to “form records: analogues to living memory, storing information beyond individual experience”. Given the emotional value invested in textiles and textile-based art, it is interesting to note that until relatively recently, historical research on textiles valorised objectivity over the more unruly yet undeniably related field of emotions. Several artists in Fresh Material: New Australian Textile Art demonstrate that textiles, with their visceral and psychological immediacy, possess a potency that can provide powerful, affective experiences enabling us to tap into our full emotional repertoire, be they joyous or painful. Consider, for example, wedding or burial attire, hand-stitched quilts or clothing that evokes love, joy, and loss, or our favourite pair of jeans. Textiles and textile-based art is a means of preserving and accessing notions of memory and belonging that are central to human experience.

SPACE AND PLACE The critique of gendered hierarchies in art catalysed by the feminist interventions of the 70s, while not resolved, are now joined by equally urgent matters such as the climate emergency, globalisation, and tenuous geopolitical borders. Textiles and textile art is imbued with histories of migration, colonisation, and globalisation. They are therefore accompanied by fraught origin stories that many artists recognise. Textile art has the capacity to make geographies tangible, materialised in various forms that foster critical dialogues on the ways we come into daily contact with textiles. Textiles carry layers of information that tell stories of space, place and belonging; they are deeply rooted in identity and the liminal concept of an increasingly transitory global populous. In recent years, the textile industry’s role in environmental degradation has drawn international attention. An ongoing dilemma is the significant waste generated by overproduction, toxic landfills, and damage caused by manufacturing processes and synthetic materials. Many textile artists mindfully navigate this terrain by transforming existing materials through reuse and recycling. As the viewer will surely feel, the weight of these concerns plays heavily on the minds of the artists in Fresh Material: New Australian Textile Art. CONCLUSION In Fray: Art and Textile Politics, Julia Bryan-Wilson offers an incisive account of how textiles form part of our social fabric, demonstrating their power to communicate personal and political agency, which is embedded in the materials used to convey the artist’s message. Recent writing by scholars such as Bryan-Wilson, McBrinn, and Jenelle Porter’s Vitamin T: Threads and Textiles in Contemporary Art provide critical attention to the growing significance of textile-based arts. Yet, there is room for a more global, intersectional critique to define the politics of textiles for 21st-century artists and audiences. Such a tome could consider, for example, the recent global reckoning that followed the Black Lives Matter movement, the #MeToo movement and the ongoing decolonisation of cultural and other institutions. This would be no minor task, and therefore I leave it to a bolder scholar than I to dare tackle such a substantial topic. Textile art has, as Bryan-Wilson suggests, been described as either radical by eschewing the digital or the manufactured, as an alternative to commoditised mass production, or as conservative for its closeness to traditional craft roots. So how does contemporary textile art respond to this? The artists in Fresh Material: New Australian Textile Art offer fresh insights, proving that textile art can be either or all these things. They continue as they always have done – with enduring regard for materiality, respect for process, consideration of historical techniques, joy in decelerated time, and a hopeful eye on the future.

D R L A I N I BU R TO N

Troy-Anthony Baylis Nomenclature (Belgian Gardens) [detail], 2021 Sliced and re-woven acrylic paintings on canvas 68.5 x 199 cm Image courtesy of the artist

TROY-ANTHONY BAYLIS A B O UT TH E A R TIS T Sydney-born in 1976, Brisbane-bred, and Adelaide-based since 2000, Troy-Anthony Baylis also resided in various Queensland townships throughout his childhood. A descendant of the Jawoyn from the Northern Territory and also of Irish ancestry, he is a full-time artist working through themes of Reconciliation, identity, and trauma recovery and healing. Recent exhibitions include The National 2019: New Australian Art at Carriageworks, Sydney and solo exhibitions Nomenclatures at Art Gallery of South Australia (2020), and Yes, I Am Musical at Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide (2021).

A B O UT TH E W O R K With these bold textile ‘landscape’ works I call Nomenclatures I have literally woven together the changing place names of towns throughout Australia. The starting point was The Nomenclature Act of 1917, a South Australian legal order to anglicise German place names. In South Australia some of the names were restored back to the German in 1935. I have added another layer to the reading of the work through over-writing in cursive embroidery the names of Aboriginal peoples or Country on which these towns are located. In doing so I am reinstating these unceded lands in an act of typographic decolonisation.

Julie Bradley Out West, 2019 Mixed media collaged paper combined with gouache washes and line work on paper comprising of 6 panels of 800 gsm Arches watercolour paper 66 x 336 cm Image courtesy of the artist

J ULIE BRADLEY A B O UT TH E A R TIS T Julie Bradley is a professional artist working at the Australian National Capital Artists (ANCA) studios in Canberra. Her mixed media works on paper explore ideas of connectedness and express emotional states of being. In these works she is not only exploring the formal arrangement of shapes and playing with compositional elements, but is also communicating the emotion derived from direct experiences of being in places and landscapes that move her in some way. Every place walked by the artist engenders an emotional response. This is translated into colour, shape and line, and the artworks tell the story of that place through the use of vibrant colour, organic and geometric shapes and composition.

A B O UT TH E W O R K Out West is a response to observing farmland and fields in the far west of NSW on a blazingly hot summer day. We experience the world in layers –layers of time –memories – understanding. In this work I physically apply layers of paper and gouache paint to build up an image and through this process I am also layering my experiences and emotional responses to a place. Many levels of land use are referred to within the composition ranging from the original paths walked by first nations people to the boundaries and fences put in place by colonisers. The patterns of harvesting machines and water irrigation along with animal pathways are also implied. There is a nod to women’s work through the use of humble materials and patchwork techniques and having had both a mother and grandmother who were accomplished makers in fabric I get a sense of familial continuity when I work this way. The landscape is abstracted and reduced to directional lines and contrasting organic and geometric shapes applied to a gouache wash background. The use of the circle and an elongated format direct the eye along the length of the work so that the viewer has a sense of walking through the landscape and of time passing.

Regi Cherini Beauty (hers), 2021 1 of 4 in the Pink Tax Series Embroidery floss on cotton 32 x 42 cm framed Image courtesy of the artist

REGI CHERINI A B O UT TH E A R TIS T Regi Cherini’s works explore the shared experiences of women within the frame of societal pressure, expectation, and gender inequality. Inspired by the contemporary needlecraft movement, Cherini utilises the medium of embroidery to depict still life compositions. She revels in subverting the traditional domestic medium of embroidery to express seemingly incompatible subject matter. Approached with a post-modern sensibility, referencing and yet rejecting a traditional context, Cherini demonstrates that embroidery can be an unconventional and subversive medium for examining and challenging issues of gender, equality, class and culture.

A B O UT TH E W O R K The ‘Pink Tax’ refers to the gender-based price discrimination that exists when women’s products are more expensive than men’s without reasonable cause. With women already disadvantaged due to the gender pay gap, the Pink Tax further contributes to the economic inequality between men and women. Women’s personal care products don’t just cost more, there are more of them. The pressure on women to be beautiful and stay youthful is a real societal expectation whereas products geared towards men are an option rather than an expectation to ‘anti-age’. There’s also the additional cold hard cash women have to factor in throughout their life to pay for pads, tampons and other feminine hygiene products.

India Collins Hung, Drawn and Quartered [detail], 2021 Textiles, recycled textiles 220 x 220 cm Image courtesy of the artist

INDIA C OLLINS A B O UT TH E A R TIS T Textile art, weaving, sewing, stitching… for too long has been dismissively categorised and labelled as women’s work. I want to celebrate and honour some of these traditional artforms and their complex & nuanced intricacies which are characterised by extreme versatility, tactility, and sensitivity. Whilst my work addresses serious issues, they are presented with a somewhat kitsch sensibility and sense of whimsy. Drawing down on elements of pop culture, the imagery draws people in to reveal a more serious story which deserves space and consideration. At the crux of this body of work is an intention to identify, expose and acknowledge difficult truths around female sexuality. This series of work explores histories, myths, truths & untruths around sex and the female anatomy, revealing stories of vulnerability, trauma, complacency, power, triumph, and honour. My work is a visceral and poetic exposition of human vulnerability.

A B O UT TH E W O R K This work is symbolic of the vulnerability that often characterises the female existence. That which is a significant source of empowerment and one of our greatest sources of life, freedom and pleasure is also a place of tremendous vulnerability and trauma. The commodification of women and sex is rampant and widely accepted throughout the world. Has the sanctity of sexuality been lost, or forgotten, or buried or has it simply become obsolete? How is our culture evolving? Through my work, I want to call out the complacency that runs rife through so many of our hearts. We must choose to SEE and ACKNOWLEDGE. From there the healing revolution can take place. In this work, the Circle represents notions of infinity and totality, the “whole self”. The eye represents awareness, moral conscience, intuition, truth & self-protection. The heart is our flesh and blood, our bodies; the vessel that carries us but doesn’t define us.

Leah Emery Commodore 64 Self Portrait triptych [detail], 2021 Embroidery thread on aida cloth with laser cut matt board 40 x 40 cm framed; 20 x 30 cm framed; 25 x 20 cm framed Image courtesy of the artist

LEAH EMERY A B O UT TH E A R TIS T Leah Emery is an artist based in Brisbane whose practice is concerned with packaging often difficult content in a shell of mirth and whimsy to pursue her storytelling. Her works serve as a protest to the cultural etiquette of withholding a healthy public access on topics surrounding gender identity, sex, and intimacy despite being so quintessential to the human experience, as well as an objection to cultural tendencies to promote and reward an unhealthy manipulated, homogenised body aesthetic. Her primary means of communication are rendered in feminist and humanist textiles. She has been exhibiting around Australia and internationally since 2005 and has been featured in Huffington Post, Juxtapoz and SBS2’s the Feed.

A B O UT TH E W O R K Long gone are the days where female portraiture was the primary realm of male artists. Removing the male gaze from depictions of female identifying subjects and returning them to the domain of neutrality has been one of the joys of engaging in the portraiture realm as a non-male artist. As a woman nearing middle age, a child borne at the advent of the digital era, much of my identity, both as an artist and as a consumer of contemporary culture has been embedded in digital pursuits. I photoshop collage my concepts prior to turning them into a pixelated pattern from which to cross stitch, and my prior career was as a video game artist, dealing in daily pixel manipulation. I began BASIC programming with my dad at age 6 and rather than shying away from my life being so symbiotically linked with digital technology, I want to embrace my technological connection and thus have embedded my likeness with the technology that first encapsulated my inspiration and drew me closer to my father; setting me up for a lifelong love/hate relationship with this beloved electronic parasite.

Marion Gaemers & Lynnette Griffiths Bommie; Polymeric Evolution [detail], 2021 Ghost net, recovered beach rope 360 x 180 x 50 cm Photography by Lynnette Griffiths

MA RION LYNNETTE & GAEMERS GRIFFITHS A B O UT TH E A R TIS T Using marine debris, Marion Gaemers & Lynnette Griffiths have worked collaboratively creating large-scale installations since 2010. Recently exhibiting together in Ephemera and Umbrella Studio Contemporary Arts, Townsville, Sabbia Gallery, Sydney (2020), Port Douglas and Cairns Art Gallery (2019). With Erub Arts they have exhibited at GOMA Brisbane (2020), London (2019) and Singapore (2017). They have permanent displays at the Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney. Both have works collected by Museo Sa Bassa Blanca, Spain, Le Havre Museum of Natural History, France, Australian National Museum, Australian National Maritime Museum, Musee d’ethnographie de Geneva (MEG) Switzerland, Art Gallery of NSW. In 2020 they formed the Ghost Net Collective allowing for cross-cultural collaborations to be recognised.

A B O UT TH E W O R K This is a collaborative work between two artists who both live beside the Great Barrier Reef. A coral bommie made from various plastic polymers (ghost nets and rope) recovered from the environment. This plastic drifts freely in our oceans being discarded by the fishing industry and recreational fishers. It starts as fishing gear but ends as micro plastics, lasting forever. It is ingested by animals in the ocean and finally by humans - the question is - what percentage of plastic can we survive with, in our bodies? It examines the theme of fragility. This large-scale work moves between life, death, and fantasy.

Emma Gardner I found my way (Handless Maiden), 2021 Cyanotype, Hand Embroidered Thread and Ink on Calico 139 x 82 cm Photography by Thomas Oliver

E MMA GA RDNER A B O UT TH E A R TIS T Emma Gardner is an interdisciplinary artist based in Meanjin/Brisbane. Gardner reworks textiles, experiments with drawing, print and embroidery, and explores the layered implications of the female nude. Gardner has a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) from Queensland College of Arts (2016). Her solo exhibition, Wildish, recently toured from Redland Gallery to Lismore Regional Gallery. She’s also participated in multiple group exhibitions in spaces including the Museum of Brisbane, State Library of Queensland and D-Lux. Gardner’s practice-led research has taken her to England, India, Spain, and South Africa, supported by funding from the Australian Government, Arts Queensland, the Sydney Myer Foundation and the Regional Arts and Development Fund.

A B O UT TH E W O R K 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.

Hannah Gartside Fall/Winter 1986 [detail], 2018-19 Found scarves, blouses and diamanté necklaces; electroplated found shoes and bag; thread, fans 500 x 252 x 105 cm Commission for Dress Code at Museum of Brisbane, 2018 Photography by Louis Lim

HANNAH GA RTSIDE A B O UT TH E A R TIS T Hannah Gartside is a multidisciplinary English-Australian artist living and working in Naarm, Victoria. She uses discarded, found and collected textiles to create installations, sculptures and costumes that explore feminism and material culture. Her artworks present ways of experiencing the profound sensuality and subjectivity of our relationship to the material world. Gartside holds a BFA in Sculpture from the Victorian College of Arts, and a BFA in Fashion Design from Queensland University of Technology. She has exhibited widely across Australia including at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Ian Potter Museum, Museum of Brisbane, QUT Art Museum, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Institute of Modern Art and Ararat Gallery TAMA. Gartside’s practice has been profiled in Art Collector, Vogue Living, Art Guide, Peppermint Magazine and Art News New Zealand. Her work is held in the Artbank and Wangaratta Art Gallery collections. Prior to training in sculpture, Gartside worked as a theatre and ballet costumier, mainly on productions for Queensland Ballet.

A B O UT TH E W O R K In Fall/Winter 1986, carefully collected second-hand leopard print scarves and blouses are stitched together to form a large patchwork. The work speaks to the ways we use clothing and adornment as both shields, and lures. Gartside is enthralled by glamour, as a thin, beckoning, complicated form of feminine and camp sartorial power and agency.

Julia Gutman The Black Jeans [detail], 2021 Clothing worn by the artist and her friends, embroidery cotton and polyester thread on calico 188 x 140 cm Photography by Simon Hewson

JULIA GUTMAN A B O UT TH E A R TIS T Julia Gutman is a multidisciplinary artist living and working on unceded Gadigal Land. She reuses found textiles to produce ‘patchworks’ that merge personal and collective histories to explore themes of femininity, intimacy and memory. Gutman holds an MFA in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BFA in Painting from UNSW Art and Design. She was a finalist in the 2021 Ramsay Prize at the Art Gallery of South Australia and the 2020 NSW Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship at Artspace Sydney. Gutman’s practice has been profiled in the Sydney Morning Herald, ABC Arts, Art Collector and Ocula. Her work has been exhibited across Australia and internationally with shows in Sydney, Adelaide, Rome and New York.

A B O UT TH E W O R K In this work, Gutman is responding to ‘the white skirt’ (1937) a painting by Balthus of his wife Antoinette. The late PolishFrench artist, born Balthasar Klossowski, is known for his erotically-charged images of girls on the cusp of puberty. Balthus and Antoinette first met in 1924 when she was twelve years of age and he was nineteen. His other models were often children, daughters of his staff, usually depicted partially dressed and gazing wistfully into the distance. In the original painting, Antoinette is swathed in the titular white skirt, an open shirt and a translucent bralette. In Gutman’s version, the artist has inserted herself into Balthus’ signature green chair, in an outfit made out of and imitating the clothing she wore while constructing the piece. She is dressed to work, dressed to construct an image of herself. Her gaze is more pissed-off than demure. She wants to be looked at her on her own terms, sitting in dialogue with Anoinette on agency, power, intimacy and the performance of feminity. Like all of Gutman’s ‘patchworks’ this piece is made almost entirely out of clothing donated by people in her life, in this case including herself – a collection of memories that become significant. With each stitch, both nurture and rupture occur – the process is as tender as it is aggressive.

Vivien Haley at the edge [detail], 2021 Hand dyed, mono-printed and pencil drawing on silk. Digital print onto linen 245 x 110 cm; 245 x 110 cm; 245 x 67 cm Image courtesy of the artist

V IVIEN H ALEY A B O UT TH E A R TIS T Born in London, Vivien emigrated to Australia in the mid 60s’; the new environment a mainspring for her interest in the natural world. Studied sculpture and printmaking at the National Art School and Alexander Mackie College, Sydney. Awarded a Visual Arts Board Grant on graduating in 1975 to exhibit at the Sculpture Society, Sydney. Her art practice incorporates hand printing and digital print textiles, collage, drawing and painting. Affinities between plants, animals and landscape are manifested through her distinctive visual language of unique monoprints and mark making. Vivien’s work evolves, depicting our place in the natural world within the context of a rapidly changing environment. During a four decade career she has taught in professional and educational arts programmes. Exhibiting in solo and selected shows within public and private galleries and museums, around Australia and overseas, including the Textile Museum, Krefeld Germany. Represented in the National Textile Collection, Tamworth Regional Gallery and public institutions within Australia.

A B O UT TH E W O R K Fossils and stromatolites convey a stratified glimpse of past life on Earth. A new type of rock called plastiglomerate is emerging on our foreshores, as natural sediments and organic debris fuse with burnt and melted plastic. This work evokes both the past and an uncertain future. The pencil tracings, delicate prints and blurred shadows depict evolving lifeforms, layered upon suspended silk, which ripples like the fragility of Earth itself. A digital print on linen of the natural world manifests a vanishing landscape. The viewer is invited to consider the insidious impact of plastics and anthropogenic activities on our vulnerable ecosystems.

Michelle Hamer Staying Alive, 2021 Hand-stitching, mixed yarn on perforated plastic 51 x 67 cm Image courtesy of the artist

MICHELLE HAMER A B O UT TH E A R TIS T Michelle Hamer’s art explores how the language around us reflects societal fears, beliefs, and aspirations. Both personal and political in tone, her painterly hand-stitched and drawn pieces examine familiar and revealing, though rarely captured, moments within ‘everyday’ life. Based primarily on her own photographs and collected language, the works negotiate a space between 2D and 3D. With its darkly humorous delivery, works oscillate between fast and slow; past and present; analogue and digital. The recipient of numerous grants and awards, Hamer is exhibited extensively; included in major collections; and feature publications include The Atlantic, The Guardian, VAULT, Sydney Morning Herald.

A B O UT TH E W O R K Set against the clear blue sky, while crisis raged below, ‘Staying Alive’ explores the pandemic through the juxtaposition of digital & manual practice, the ways we live, and how, whilst we continue specific routines, we maintain the ‘loops’ of being alive. Similarly, Hamer has stitched/looped through many years of isolation prior to and including 2020-21. The code declares a new variable (‘var’) called ‘still alive’ which it sets as ‘true’. It goes into a ‘while loop’, which is a continuous loop that states while ‘still alive’ (as in while the statement is current/true) the following routines/ functions should continue to be executed. These functions are to be repeated until ‘still alive’ is not true anymore.

Talitha Kennedy A wreath is created with my own limbs when I hold my own hands [detail], 2021 Leather, thread, wire and polyester fibre 75 x 75 x 25 cm Photography by Darren Tanny Tan

TALITHA K ENNEDY A B O UT TH E A R TIS T Talitha Kennedy works in black leather to embody the relationship between humans to the natural world. She has exhibited sculptures and drawings in solo shows in Melbourne, Sydney, Darwin, and Townsville and has exhibited in curated exhibitions including Legacy: Reflections on Mabo touring nationally (2019-2021), Fecund: Fertile Worlds toured by Artback NT (2018-2019), As long as the night is dark at Wagga Wagga Art Gallery and MARS Gallery (2017), and Not Fair (2014). Accomplished Masters by Research with an Australian Post-Graduate Award and won a Qantas Contemporary Art Award and ArtStart Grant from Australia Council.

A B O UT TH E W O R K Sewing leather into plants makes new life from the dead. I use textile leather that is cow skin tanned and dyed specifically for gloves. Hand-stitching black leather embodies the will to create as bound to the nature of death. To hold your hands together, one over the other makes a circle with your arms like an ouroboros (the ancient symbol of a serpent eating its own tail). Turning this gesture of the body into botany makes hand like roots grow into limb branches to finger twigs and back again; the eternal cycle of renewal is memorialised in this wreath.

Sheree Kinlyside Arrested Memory I – VI, 2021 Two colour Monotype on paper with hand sewn thread and fabric shards from evening wear 30.3 x 30 cm each Photography by Pierce Eldridge

SHEREE KINLYS IDE A B O UT TH E A R TIS T Since gaining a BA (visual arts) at James Cook University in 2000, Sheree Kinlyside has been a practicing printmaker and book artist. She has participated in numerous community arts projects and artists book productions in Australia, the US, UK, and Ireland. Using traditional print media and letterpress, bookmaking and binding techniques Sheree has for some years now explored colour relationships and incorporated her love of textiles with printmaking. She has found that the interaction between monotypes on paper, hand stitching and her collection of vintage and inherited fabrics, inevitable and stimulating.

A B O UT TH E W O R K Some memories are stimulated by the feel and look of fabrics. These works are a response to the recent death of my mother (Feb ’21) and our shared fondness for textiles and handcraft. They reference some of the specific memories from my childhood and early adult years. Many of which had been forgotten until I was reminded by the inheritance of her hand sewn evening wear. These stories are “arrested” in the shapes and cast shadows of the layered fabrics and held in the present by the textured background colours of the print.

Susan Peters Nampitjin Spinifex grasses found around Lake Stretch along the Canning Stock Route, 2021 Hessian, yellow ochre, black ochre dye, and white cotton string 32 x 78 cm Image courtesy of Townsville City Galleries

SUS AN PE TERS NAMPITJIN A B O UT TH E A R TIS T Susan Peters Nampitjin was born on Argyle station in 1963 near the banks of the Behn River. She is a descendant of Walmajarri and Ngarti People (Yagga Yagga Way) who hold ancient stories, Waljirri (dreamtime) ceremonies, and oral history of families living around Paruku (Lake Gregory). The central focus of Peters Nampitjin’s art practice is a personal reflection about family, Country, community, oral histories, survival, and traditional lifestyles (traditional foods and medicines). Her works are contemporary and include the use of traditional symbols and ochres. She often uses other mediums as an extension of her art practice, including inks on fabrics, and natural bush materials, such as seeds, pandanus leaves, and grasses to make baskets.

A B O UT TH E W O R K This painting depicts spinifex grass found along Canning Stock Route at Lake Stretch. Spinifex grow everywhere through the desert and Australia. There are many stages of the spinifex grasses growth that are observed by Aboriginal people during the year and years. This artwork depicts the dying staged of spinifex, where termite and other insects eat and live in and around the spinifex. The dying stage of the grasses become very bare looking leaving brown/green concentric circles which is depicted by the painting of yellow ochre circles. The white wool stitching represents the spinifex grasses. Aboriginal people use spinifex for bush medicine, collecting resins, making wind breaks. Families have and maintain the dreaming stories for spinifex and every year the spinifex is burnt to promote new growth.

Nicole O’Loughlin Sally Rees as the Crone [detail], 2021 Embroidery, applique, and polymer paint on linen 71 x 92 cm Image courtesy of the artist

N ICOLE O’LOUGHLIN A B O UT TH E A R TIS T Nicole O’Loughlin (b. 1978 Warragul) is an interdisciplinary artist who works across a variety of mediums to explore societal issues, pop culture and women’s issues. Using traditional media in a contemporary context O’Loughlin challenges the idea of craft and pushes back against the industrialisation of the hand made. O’Loughlin has exhibited consistently in Australia. Her works are held in national and international collections, including the Australian Parliament House Collection. Her work has been shortlisted for numerous national prizes. She is currently undertaking a PhD in Arts and Creativity and its impact on Health and Wellbeing at the University of Tasmania where she also teaches in the drawing and printmaking studio.

A B O UT TH E W O R K Sally Rees as the Crone is a reverent portrait of an artist whose work challenges the archetypes of the older woman. In this portrait, Sally manifests the Crone, in a strong uninhibited manner that shows the power and knowing she holds. Portraying Sally as the Crone acts as a homage to the idea of the witch as a sacred wise and transcendent woman. The act of stitching was deemed to be craft in the western canon of art, and similarly the term witchcraft was used to marginalise women at the periphery of patriarchal society.

Ema Shin Resettled Body [detail], 2021 Cotton, wool, stainless 245 x 111 x 10 cm Image courtesy of the artist

EMA SHIN A B O UT TH E A R TIS T Ema Shin is a Melbourne based artist who was born and grew up in Niigata, Japan. Since 2005 Shin has held and participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions, artist-in-residency programs and community projects in Japan, Korea, Mexico, Kenya, Australia and other countries. Since the birth of her first child in 2014 she has integrated her arts practice with daily life, working in a home studio producing works that celebrate women’s lives and bodies. Her multi disciplinary practice, application of historical techniques and use of tactile materials result in contemporary artworks that express physical awareness, femininity and sexuality.

A B O UT TH E W O R K My new tapestry work titled Resettled Body is a response to my own personal experiences and my family’s experiences of migration and adjusting to new environments. This largescale textile work is filled with forms and shapes representing body parts and plants to present life and fertility. This hand-woven work intertwines botanical forms I have discovered in Australia and symbolic flowers used in Korean art with stylised female body parts to express my experiences of adjusting to life in Australia as an extension of my Korean family’s three generations of experiences living in Japan.

Hiromi Tango Moon Tears, 2021 Textile, ceramic, and mixed media 160 x 80 x 80 cm (including 20 cm plinth) Photography by Alex Chomicz

HIROMI TANGO A B O UT TH E A R TIS T Hiromi Tango is an interdisciplinary Japanese-Australian artist based in Northern New South Wales, whose practice spans sculpture, installation, performance, drawing, painting, and photography. Her work explores the poetic intersections between art, nature, health, and neuroscience. She has dedicated her practice to exploring how artmaking and engagement can contribute to positive mental health. Hiromi has exhibited throughout Australia and internationally in the United States, Belgium, Dubai and throughout Asia Pacific including Singapore, South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, and New Zealand. Her work is held in major Australian public collections as well as private collections across Australia and overseas.

A B O UT TH E W O R K In the still of night Sleeplessly gazing skywards Deep inky darkness My soul spills over Tears of joy and of sadness Flowing silently Radiant moonbeams Dancing free amongst the stars Iridescent glow A river of tears Brilliant light refracting Midnight Rainbow In Japanese the term Moonbow describes the spectrum that can be observed around the moon at night. For me this is a very poetic concept, as often when I am unable to sleep, I sit and look at the night sky. Meditating on this sight, Moon Tears describes the complex mix of beauty and emotions that I often feel.

Sonia Ward Fountain of Life [detail] 2021 Tapestry 95 x 95 cm Photography by Robyn Volker

SONIA WARD A B O UT TH E A R TIS T Sonia Ward is a multi-disciplinary artist, originally from Adelaide. While raising a family she lived in several locations around Australia including, Perth, Newcastle, Wagga Wagga and Brisbane. Finally, settling and currently practicing in Townsville she began her art journey at Pimlico TAFE, completing an Advanced Diploma and later a Bachelor of Visual Arts Degree through Canberra University. While studying Ward received a Deans Excellence Award and Academic Excellence Award. Diverse works on display include, paper pulp masks (CQ University) aluminium jumping jack puppets (Pimlico TAFE) laser cut design (Magnetic Island), fibre art works (Townsville Women’s Centre).

A B O UT TH E W O R K My work is inspired by the evolution of art and craft, changing attitudes to craftsmanship and how work is valued in relation to gender. Referencing historical works/methods such as painting, tapestry, ready mades, my aim is to reflect on the history of craftsmanship and the role of artists as social commentator. The time-consuming process of sewing the tapestry, was cause to reflect on the history of tapestries, valued as status symbols amongst the aristocracy in the Middle Ages and in the 13th and 14th centuries by the Church. Once valued, how do we regard these labour-intensive processes today?

Jenny Watson, Sunshine of your love, 2020 Acrylic on French cotton and tapestry template 140 x 137 cm; 39 x 31 cm Image courtesy of Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery

JENNY WATS ON A B O UT TH E A R TIS T Jenny Watson is a leading Australian artist whose conceptual painting practice spans more than four decades. Inspired by both punk and feminism, Watson’s readily recognised autobiographical and fictional features combine colour, fabric, text, recurring figures, and subtle humour to create a powerful narrative. Though deliberately naïve in style the paintings are acerbic in their emotional detail; a signature, rudimentary expressionistic style that Watson continues to master since her strategic abdication of realism in the 1970s. Watson’s work continues to be tantalising perhaps due to the extraordinary quality of her work being at once both highly personal and universal.

Paul Yore TIME AND TIME AGAIN, 2020 Mixed media textile appliqué comprising found fabrics, buttons, quilting thread, eyelets, cotton embroidery thread 187 x 187 cm Courtesy of Hugo Michell Gallery and STATION Gallery Photography by Geoff Newton

PAUL YORE A B O UT TH E A R TIS T Paul Yore was born in 1987, Melbourne, and lives and works in Gippsland, Australia. Yore completed studies in painting and anthropology at Monash University in 2010, before taking up full time work as an artist. He is celebrated as a prominent queer artist working across installation, sound, video, collage, and textiles. Yore has shown in major institutions across Australia, and extensively internationally, including in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland, South Korea, the UK, and USA. His work is held in various public and private collections, both in Australia and internationally.

A B O UT TH E W O R K Time and Time Again draws on the rich and continuing tradition of quilt-making, utilising this pre-industrial methodology as a conceptual device to interrogate contemporary concerns. Constructed from reclaimed and waste materials, including fabric remnants, clothing and bedding, the piece is embedded with hidden histories, traces of the people who made the fabrics, and the residue of the domestic life of the fabric as an object of consumerism. In this way, the work subtly alludes to, and critiques, the ways in which our lives and labour are determined by the prevailing capitalistic mode of production, which in turn has had dire consequences for human and non-human communities alike. The circular form of the piece, coupled with the title suggest the cyclical nature of time, and the recurring themes of history that we ignore at our own peril. The piece is embroidered with text taken from Elie Wiesel’s 1986 Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

LIST OF WORKS Troy-Anthony Baylis Nomenclature (Carbrook), 2021 Sliced and re-woven acrylic paintings on canvas, embroidered acrylic wool, 40 x 231 cm

Regi Cherini Beauty (hers), 2021 1 of 4 in the Pink Tax Series Embroidery floss on cotton, 32 x 42 cm framed

Troy-Anthony Baylis Nomenclature (Holbrook), 2021 Sliced and re-woven acrylic paintings on canvas, embroidered acrylic wool, 43 x 261 cm

Regi Cherini Toilet (hers), 2021 1 of 4 in the Pink Tax Series Embroidery floss on cotton, 32 x 42 cm framed

Troy-Anthony Baylis Nomenclature (Collinsvale), 2021 Sliced and re-woven acrylic paintings on canvas, embroidered acrylic wool, 67 x 171 cm

Regi Cherini Maintenance, Beauty & Toilet (his), 2021 1 of 4 in the Pink Tax Series Embroidery floss on cotton, 32 x 42 cm framed

Troy-Anthony Baylis Nomenclature (Lilydale), 2021 Sliced and re-woven acrylic paintings on canvas, embroidered acrylic wool, 71.5 x 174 cm

India Collins Hung, Drawn and Quartered, 2021 Textiles, recycled textiles, 220 x 220 cm

Troy-Anthony Baylis Nomenclature (Belgian Gardens), 2021 Sliced and re-woven acrylic paintings on canvas, embroidered acrylic wool, 68.5 x 199 cm Julie Bradley Out West, 2019 Mixed media collaged paper combined with gouache washes and line work on paper comprising of 6 panels of 800 gsm Arches watercolour paper, 66 x 336 cm Regi Cherini Maintenance (hers), 2021 1 of 4 in the Pink Tax Series Embroidery floss on cotton, 32 x 42 cm framed

Leah Emery Commodore 64 Self Portrait triptych, 2021 Embroidery thread on aida cloth with laser cut matt board 40 x 40 cm framed; 20 x 30 cm framed; 25 x 20 cm framed Marion Gaemers & Lynnette Griffiths Bommie; Polymeric Evolution, 2021 Ghost net, recovered beach rope, 300 x 180 x 70 cm Emma Gardner I found my way (Handless Maiden), 2021 Cyanotype, Hand Embroidered Thread and Ink on Calico, 139 x 82 cm Hannah Gartside Fall/Winter 1986, 2018 Found scarves, blouses and diamanté necklaces; electroplated found shoes and bag; thread, fans 500 x 252 x 105 cm Commission for Dress Code at Museum of Brisbane, 2018.

Julia Gutman The Black Jeans, 2021 Clothing worn by the artist and her friends, embroidery cotton and polyester thread on calico 188 x 140 cm

Sheree Kinlyside Arrested Memory V, 2021 Two colour Monotype on paper with hand sewn thread and fabric shards from evening wear 30.3 x 30 cm

Vivien Haley at the edge, 2021 Hand dyed, mono-printed and pencil drawing on silk Digital print onto linen 245 x 110 cm; 245 x 110 cm; 245 x 67 cm

Sheree Kinlyside Arrested Memory VI, 2021 Two colour Monotype on paper with hand sewn thread and fabric shards from evening wear 30.3 x 30 cm

Michelle Hamer Staying Alive, 2021 Hand-stitching, mixed yarn on perforated plastic 51 x 67 cm

Susan Peters Nampitjin Clay Pans and Milky Water at Nelly Yards, 2021 Hessian, white clay ochre and yellow ochre, and natural coffee bean dyes, 32 x 78 cm

Talitha Kennedy A wreath is created with my own limbs when I hold my own hands, 2021 Leather, thread, wire and polyester fibre, 75 x 75 x 25 cm Sheree Kinlyside Arrested Memory I, 2021 Two colour Monotype on paper with hand sewn thread and fabric shards from evening wear 30.3 x 30 cm Sheree Kinlyside Arrested Memory II, 2021 Two colour Monotype on paper with hand sewn thread and fabric shards from evening wear 30.3 x 30 cm Sheree Kinlyside Arrested Memory III, 2021 Two colour Monotype on paper with hand sewn thread and fabric shards from evening wear 30.3 x 30 cm Sheree Kinlyside Arrested Memory IV, 2021 Two colour Monotype on paper with hand sewn thread and fabric shards from evening wear 30.3 x 30 cm

Susan Peters Nampitjin Wattle flowers found along Canning Stock Route around Lake Stretch, 2021 Hessian, yellow ochre and white clay, yellow wool, and black ochre dye, 32 x 78 cm Susan Peters Nampitjin Bush Honey and Water Dreaming, 2021 Hessian, white and yellow clay/ochre. Natural turmeric dye, 32 x 78 cm Susan Peters Nampitjin Spinifex grasses found along Canning Stock Route at Lake Stretch, 2021 Hessian, yellow ochre, black ochre dye, cotton string (pink, white), 32 x 78 cm Susan Peters Nampitjin Spinifex grasses found around Lake Stretch along the Canning Stock Route, 2021 Hessian, yellow ochre, black ochre dye, and white cotton string, 32 x 78 cm

Nicole O’Loughlan Sally Rees as the Crone, 2021 Embroidery, applique and polymer paint on linen 71 x 92 cm Ema Shin Resettled Body, 2021 Cotton, wool, stainless, 258 x 107 x 9 cm Hiromi Tango Moon Tears, 2021 Textile, ceramic and mixed media, 160 x 80 x 80 cm (including 20 cm plinth) Sonia Ward Fountain, 2021 Altered Urinal fabric, wool, thread, 90 x 43 x 50 cm Sonia Ward Fountain of Life, 2021 Tapestry, 95 x 95 cm Jenny Watson Under Heaven, 2020 Acrylic and diamante buttons on French satin and tapestry templates 268 x 130 cm; 12 x 18 cm; 18 x 26 cm Courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery Jenny Watson Sunshine of your love, 2020 Acrylic on French cotton and tapestry template 140 x 137 cm; 39 x 31 cm Courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery Paul Yore TIME AND TIME AGAIN, 2020 Mixed media textile appliqué comprising found fabrics, buttons, quilting thread, eyelets, cotton embroidery thread, 187 x 187 cm Courtesy of Hugo Michell Gallery and STATION Gallery

Fresh Material: New Australian Textile Art

Articles inside

Fresh Material: New Australian Textile Art by Dr Laini Burton

Introduction by Jonathan McBurnie