Stitching Change

Beaded Geranium Root – 40 x 4cm – $250.00

Pod – 50 x 5cm – $350.00

Crustacean – $600.00

Deception – 200 x 200cm – POA

These works relate to our earth, the copper crustacean. Deception is concerned with the appalling treatment of refugees, our lack of humanity, and the cruelty of our government. #notinmyname 

Website:        annataylorart.com

Facebook:     annataylorart

Instagram:     @annataylorart

Annette designs and makes. Challenges and limits provide inspiration. Her creative process involves imagination, observation, research, sketching and sculpting with used materials. She often knits covers for inanimate objects to add interest and inspiration to public spaces, recording the process and sharing it via social media.

Mel’s mob – 67 x 200 x 200cm – Negotiable

• – Represented Australia at #yarnbombingdaytrivento, Italy, August 2019 before Covid19 hit; 
• – Reminded the world of the plight of Australian wildlife during the following summer’s ferocious wildfires;
• – Whipped up international discussion on the misappropriation of indigenous culture;
• – Made a guest appearance at the Australian Textile Awards 2020 closed by Covid 19 and;
• – Failed to reach Sydney for the 2020 Festival of Lace, postponed by Covid19 then cut off by state border closures.

Mel’s mob is modelled on a small group of Eastern Grey kangaroos. They are fabricated from recycled material, five have a zip underneath and bamboo sticks in their legs and feet. The standing joeys have coat hanger wire support and rag stuffing. Each marsupial is covered in classic knitted lace reflecting Australia’s multicultural heritage. The natural coloured woollen yarn complimented the local stone in the ancient hilltop town.

Facebook:     Nini & Wink

Instagram:     @niniandwink

Recondition    – 180 x 300 x 100cm – $7,800.00 each

Here to challenge your idea of what sustainable fashion looks like. A collaboration where photography, fashion and ethics are explored by Jake Steele and Asha Sym through their fashion label ‘Decadent’. What started as an exhibition about fabric choices and environmental factors in producing them, quickly developed into looking at how we look after and dispose of our clothes. Fashion should be about fun, it should be about self expression but lets do it ethically and thoughtfully, and we believe there’s a few ways of doing that!

Recondition is a work bringing focus to the circular lifecycle that natural fibres can have if cared for and recycled properly. Silks are made from natural fibres and are able to be composted at the end of the useful life cycle. 

Website:     www.decadentlabel.com

Facebook:     Decadent.Label 

Instagram:         @decadent.label 

Genre? Pas dans cette économie (Gender? Not in this economy) – 43.5 x 42cm – SOLD

Genre? Pas dans cette économie (Gender? Not in this economy)’ depicts CJ, a non-binary person, de-gendering their own body, which is perceived as womanly. They use embroidery thread, a typically feminine medium to highlight how their body has been and continues to be viewed, due to gendered norms. Knowing that CJ is non-binary challenges us to not take for granted aesthetics and binary constructions, enabling us to step back and de-gender what has been so fiercely gendered. Here, they present their de-gendered naked body as slightly abstracted, through detailed textile line work, for the viewer to deconstruct their own gendered perceptions.

““Banksia Praemorsa (Mums Vase)” – 47 x 47cm – SOLD

Two great loves , old china and flowers. I’m mixing them to lift my spirits during our 5th lock down . My practice regularly explores the natural world including protest pieces against the destruction of the Tarkine, of Adani and the proposals to turn the nature reserves of the Galilee Basin into open cut coal mines squandering ground water and the home of the Black Throated Finch. In the atmosphere of Covid and constant lock downs I am exploring memory, unearthing old family vases and collecting winter flowering native flowers on my daily walks.

Instagram:     @Harry_Met_Di

Folie A Deux – 153 x 124cm – $8000.00

Folie A Deux is an embroidered painting created in 2021. Creating this time-consuming embroidery was an act of solace during the chaotic pandemic and I found the process of creating it to be healing. As life became unpredictable, it was best to bend in order not to break and find the beauty in the chaos. The piece was created by staining canvas with acrylic inks in a loose manner, then using the lines created as guides for the embroidery. It was a process of responding to the shapes that ink naturally creates and using these as guidelines for the embroidery. I find that mediums have their own intrinsic voice and to get the best out of them we must listen to what they naturally want to do. 

Facebook:     evangelineart

Instagram:     @evangeline.cachinero

Anti-virus Vase (black binnacle) – 50 x 40 x 40cm – $250.00

Heather’s practice is shaped by her nanna-technology skills: knitting, crochet, stitch, make-do-and-mending, hoarding and assembly. She tries to save rubbish – and thereby the world – by re-presenting unwanted materials as decorative, occasionally useful domestic objects: in this case a vase and flowers.

Her exploration of the materiality of black and blingy videotape – a once ubiquitous but now scarce medium – has been going on for a decade, but the pandemic delivered a new challenge: how to rescue and repurpose discarded face-masks, She overcame the difficulty of managing hygienic, street-side retrieval by a general call-out to friends for supplies.  

Reminding us to take care, this vase is a miniature binnacle – a tall stand on board a ship that’s designed to hold a compass steady. Heather’s has teaspoons for handles, a full reel of videotape for ballast in its bottom and half a plastic water bottle inside. Carefully washed and wired, the masks have become Covid roses, plague blooms with blister pack leaves that dance in the light.

Heather was involved in the Footscray arts community for 20 years. She is now part of Ballarat’s lively creative community and currently Vice President of Ballarat Arts Alive Inc.

Instagram:     @mrswordsworthbottling

In Solidarity – 85 x 50cm – $950.00

Catherine McLister was an Irish immigrant living in the vicinity of Camp Street, Ballarat, in 1854. A few weeks prior to the Eureka rebellion and massacre on 3 December of that year, Catherine made a formal complaint of sexual misconduct and harassment against her husband’s boss – Police Inspector, Captain Gordon Evans. Embroidered onto calico with indigo dyed and copper coloured cotton thread, at times at the site of the former Government Camp and Catherine’s former residence, In Solidarity is a meditation on the growth of the #MeToo movement and the continued need to better protect and support women against sexual harassment, discrimination and assault. 

Instagram – @jemolsen

Anchored I- 34 x 39cm – NFS

“Anchored I” is an exploration of the forms that traditional stitches can take, and how they interact. Using two different types of stitches, the artist stretches, contorts, and meshes their forms together, allowing for a dynamic dialogue to take place on the fabric. Pink and yellow thread, worked in a contorted version of the Vandyke stitch, are simultaneously mingling and intertwining, while creeping to the edges of the green border, worked in a basket stitch, willing themselves to break free. Created against the backdrop of the lengthy COVID-19 lockdown of 2020, the piece also reflects the messy array of feelings brought up in many Victorians over the course of 2020. The name of the piece, “Anchored I”, therefore alludes to both the practice of anchoring thread in fabric to create the artwork, and the emotional and mental anchoring that the repetitive nature of embroidery provides.

Anchored II – 42 x 60cm – NFS

“Anchored II” can be viewed as a stand-alone artwork, or as a sister piece to “Anchored I”. The piece uses traditional stitches in an abstract, contemporary form, allowing the two basic stitches used to create a dynamic dialogue. Like its sister piece, “Anchored II” was created during the lengthy COVID-19 lockdown of 2020. The piece is thus imbued with the sense of chaos and confinement felt by many Victorians over the course of 2020. The lengthened, jagged arms of the blanket stitch, worked in cool tones, reach out to a central point, but never touch, creating a feeling of energy in the thin void at the centre of the piece. This energy is further contained by the braided chain stitch that borders the blanket stitch. It is stitched in white, its subtlety contrasting the texture and boldness of the stitch itself, and the colourful chaos of the multi-coloured blanket stitch.

Instagram: @threadsbyju

Emerging Tumbling – 140 x 55cm – $1800.00

This artwork is created using freehand machine embroidery in thread with fabric on mulberry paper translated from original life drawings by the artist. 

In this drawing Juliet explores a transition she experienced in response to the worldwide pandemic. She examines the sense of change that has come through a loss of control and shedding of what once formed the essential context of her daily life – well known habits, routines, ways of being – and the idea that in some ways there is a strength and beauty gained in learning what is essential; less is sometimes more. The lace-like effect achieved using embroidered thread on soluble fabric allows Juliet to construct drawings that exist “off the page” and have enabled her to further explore visually and conceptually concepts around women breaking free from confining supporting structures and beliefs that do not serve their potential to exist independently in space, becoming stronger, more essential visible versions of themselves.

Emerging Reclining – 60 x 60cm – $1200.00

This artwork is created using freehand machine embroidery in thread with calico translated from an original life drawing by the artist. This piece is suspended in frameless acrylic. 

The lace-like effect achieved using embroidered thread on soluble fabric allows Juliet to construct drawings that exist “off the page”. This technique of life drawing has enabled her to further explore visually and conceptually concepts around women breaking free from confining supporting structures and beliefs that do not serve their potential to exist independently, becoming stronger, more essential visible versions of themselves.

Website:        www.julietdcollins.com

Facebook:     julietdcollinsartist

Instagram:     @julietdcollins

Athena – 180 x 70cm – POA
The discoveries of knitting wire carried me along, stitch by stitch, through the long 2020 lockdowns. The fabric I was weaving was made of metal yet was mostly space, it both reflected and absorbed light, it was 2-dimensional but wanted to move. It was a chameleon: the looped patterns suggested by turn a rose window, a curtain, a shroud, armour. Finally, a strong female presence emerged, larger than life, a shadow at my shoulder to give me strategy, wisdom, and weaving: my Athena.

Salpinx Collection – Bloom – 12x16x16cm SOLD | Burgeon – 12x18x9 SOLD | Clinch – 15x13x13cm $280 | Gather – 11x13x13cm SOLD | Hug – 16x11x11cm SOLD| Interstice – 8x17x17cm $300 | Morph – 14x10x10cm $220 | Sanctuary -11x12x12cm $220 and Septum – 10x13x10cm $240

Definition: a trumpet-shaped tube, another term for Fallopian tube.

This work sits within the age-old tradition of stitching, most commonly performed by women. For me, combining lacy knitting with the resistance and toughness of wire mirrors the tensions and contradictions of female experience. Here my subject is the female reproductive organs, re-imagined, and the hidden ‘women’s troubles’ they hold.

Website:        www.kathylandvogt.com

Instagram:     @kathylandvogt

Knitting has historically been seen as a craft used for fashion and homewares and is notcommonly shown within an art context. Lauren’s knitted paintings push the traditional process of knitting from outcomes of everyday objects to pieces of art.

Using a domestic 1960s knitting machine, which was created to speed up and simplify the knitting process, the focus is on slowing down and using the machine in a unconventional innovative way by utilising the mechanics of the machine to create the canvas on the back of the artwork whilst manually hand knitting other yarn onto the machine to illustrate the design on the front. Looping together the work of the machine and work of the hand to create a knitted canvas.

Remnant – 69 x 99 x 6cm – $2500.00

With a focus on the process, Remnant captures moments in the landscape around Hanging Rock (Ngannelong), and tells a story with the progression of each loop and stitch of yarn. Documenting the movement of the light and shade, shape, and surface of the rocks via the exploration of colour, composition and texture using sustainably sourced fibres. 

Flora – 82.5 x 78 x 6cm – $2500.00

With a focus on the process, Flora captures moments in the landscape around the Macedon Ranges (Ngannelong), and tells a story with the progression of each loop and stitch of yarn. Documenting the movement of the light and shade, shape, and surface of the Snow Gum Eucalyptus trees on Mount Macedon via the exploration of colour, composition and texture using sustainably sourced fibres. 

Website:        www.laurentausend.com

Instagram:     @lauren_tausend

Tracing Threads – Variable – 100cm – POA

‘The stitch is lost unless the thread be knotted.’ Italian proverb

Tracing threads, is a co-created work by Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo and her mother Anna. The work ties their multi-generational practice together, forming a polyphonic dialogue, which further weaves their lives together in a contemporary visual form. 

The crochet artefacts were created during several collaborative performative enactments, Tracing threads of the past: Collective Crochet, dating from 2017 to present. These collaborative actions created crocheted chains of red embroidery thread, symbolising the chain migration scheme, in which many immigrants to Australia were participants (Callipari-Marcuzzo’s own family included).

The use of red thread in the work represents the lifeblood or lifeline, and the addition of the artist’s own hair, religious icons and spiritual amulets, symbolically ties generation to generation. 

Facebook:     luci.callipari.marcuzzo

Instagram:     @luci_callipari_marcuzzo

Twitter:           lucimarcuzzo

Vimeo:            lucicalliparimarcuzzo

Everyday Virus – 42 x 450cm – $2500.00

Everyday virus is what we are now living with. Yarn from Italy and loom waste from London form the matrix of this work, and the tags hold a record of days and moods with the virus and my own health over the last 18 months.

In Memory of Phil – 30 x 30 x 10cm – NFS

Jumpers, jackets, coats and the family picnic rug woven together to remember Phil

Website:        www.wovenmemories.com.au

Instagram:     @maryhandweaver

Internal Landscapes #2 – 150 x 137.5cm – $750.00

When stitching I am not necessarily thinking about what I am doing. My work is often unplanned, and I find direction as I develop a piece of work. 

I am particularly interested in the experience of the stitcher – What is happening on an internal level during the process of stitching? For me it is a place/space in which to gather the threads of my own experiences and rework these tensions/disruptions/ joys/uncertainties and come back to myself. Unconsciously I find internal paths that I meander along while gathering these threads of self and reworking what needs to be repaired. For me stitching is a less-is-more approach, valuing quality over quantity, and bringing a meaningful and thoughtful approach to my textile practice.

I enjoy working with and incorporating the imperfections of old cloth, items that have held importance to someone at some point in time and then creating something different through the process of re making.

Instagram      @n.jay18

The impact of Covid 19 on the world in 2020 was profound. Infectious diseases spread as an infected person infects others and the rate of spread depends on the reproductive rate (R) of the virus. A R value greater than 1 means the virus will spread. It follows an exponential growth pattern where numbers can start small and initially seem under control, then numbers increase rapidly. 

Exponential growth of an infectious disease such as Covid 19 is hard to visualise but the same growth pattern can be seen elsewhere in nature. Examples include coral, a lettuce leaf or a mouse plague. 

The series of R > 1 sculptures have been created using crochet stitches to visually represent exponential growth. Starting with one stitch in the centre of the work, the work grows slowly initially then at a rate that cannot be contained. Each stitch represents a case of Covid 19 and the number of stitches grow at a rate that depends on the R number.

R=1.33 – 10 x 40 x 40cm – SOLD

R=1.33 (4/3) is created by working 4 stitches into 3 stitches of the previous round. 

R=3 – 20 x 30 x 30cm – $180.00

R=3 is created by working 3 stitches into each stitch of the previous round.

Instagram:     @yellowcamelcrochet

My Maggie (Ode to Judith Wright) – 90 x 60cm – $920.00

This work bears witness to her commitment to always extending her skill-base and maintaining a dynamic practice. 

Rosa a collector of scissors and various cutting tools; explores and experiments with a layering of processes. The last few stiches hand dramatically hang from the work.  An invitation to take a moment to ponder a dramatically changing climate and the destruction of bird habitats. 

Are Magpies the Mozarts of the bush? Spending twelve months as Artist in Residence (AIR) at Park Victoria’s Coolart Homestead and Wetlands, afforded Rosa a ‘bird’s eye view’. Twitchers (bird enthusiasts) would often stop by her studio to provide updates on bird counts, and birds that had moved onto the endangered or critically endangered lists.

Rosa is impacted by the controversial limited recycling options affecting our birdlife and passionate about the environment. Living by the water, on the Mornington Peninsula close to several RAMSAR listed sites, she would like to encourage the viewer to contemplate the importance of saving the Earth for the birds and oceanlife and in turn saving the all the other lifeforms including ourselves. 

This motivated her to create these multi-layered works often sewing repetitively over and over her collages in recognition of their plight.

Rosa punctuated Coolart Wetland’s environment by flipping her works towards the lagoon in the two Bird Hides as a reminder that her work is always responsive to the environment in which she is placed and evolves on that basis. 

Collage, further re-cutting, drawing, stitching, sewing, reprinting, cutting, stitching some more, and reprinting on silk. (voile)  (This work is not framed. Rosa is happy to discuss the magnet installation, important to capture light.)

Hills Hoist 1 – 68 x 45cm – $490.00

After several layers of collage, drawing, painting, re-photographing and various hand and machine stitching, this work is re-printed on voile. 

This work celebrates the hills hoist. It touches on the idea of its current silent preservation in a constantly changing environment.  

Rosa has referenced the clothesline in her past works, reinstalling art works on clothes lines on her second visit to China in 2007. (This work is not framed. Rosa is happy to discuss the magnet installation, important to capture light.)

Website:        www.rosatato.com
Facebook:     rosatato.com.au 
Instagram:     @rosa.mar.tato.ortega.art 

Bound Gratitude – 49 x 39 x 39cm – $350.00

With this work, Rosalie aims to push the boundaries of textile art by creating an abstract, free-standing sculpture- an object usually associated with harder materials such as clay or metal. It reflects a digression in her practice that focused on creating fabric dolls/puppets. The 2020 pandemic lockdown afforded her the extra time to change direction conceptually and develop new methods of making.

The appearance of Bound Gratitude takes inspiration from ancient Inca gold statues with its shiny, metallic and ‘precious’ appearance.

Rosalie began the work with an armature made from disused soft toys that were dissected then re-assembled. Using the processes of stitching and binding she created a new human form. She sees this stage as one of re-instating the unwanted.

The binding continues externally with chains and beaded strings giving rise to the feeling of being restrained and confined. These negative emotions, however, are counter-acted by the overall positive feel of the work: it’s shiny, glitzy and reminiscent of something valuable. The situation speaks of her reality.

Rosalie’s sculpture, made during the 2020 pandemic lockdown, is recognition of her ‘privileged life’; the difficult lockdown restrictions served as an important reminder that her life was a truly fortunate one.

Instagram:     @rosaliesernia

Banksia Menziesii WA – 42 x 42 x 2cm – SOLD

Banksia Menziesii WA is part of a series called Mapped Plants. Each piece is stitched onto a map of the area where it grows naturally in Australia.

Much of Australia’s flora is unique to this land, the impact of climate change, deforestation, land mismanagement has led to loss and depletion of many of our precious plants.

This series was made to bring the beauty to the viewer, to bring an awareness of where the plants grown naturally and display the diversity and variety of Australian native plants.

Banksia Menziesii WA, is made from a map section, water coloured paper, rusted paper, hand dyed silk organza, machine embroidery. The papers and fabric are coloured then cut and stitched onto the map. 

Eating on High – 34 x 72cm – SOLD

Eating on High is a street reconfigured, photos of the local high street buildings with the map of this street, stitched together to form a new view. Eating on High is a collage of photos and map sections, hand dyed silk, machine embroidered. 

Website:        www.sallydarlison.com

Facebook:     SallyDarlisonArtist

Instagram:     @sallydarlisonartist

Panorama – 110 x 110cm – POA

Inside iteration          – 70 x 70cm – $600

Change – personal or physical – can be hard to see; it is only apparent when viewing from a temporal or spatial distance.

These works are part of a series on change in internal and external landscapes. Each is made by hand printing linen and cotton using lino. The many-step process of carving the lino, inking and printing each block and setting the ink is matched by cutting out each piece and machine or hand sewing it to the next to form a greater whole. Iteration features heavily as a theme – with colours or tones changing a small amount from layer to layer in each piece and with each piece in the series a development on ideas from the previous piece.

Both pieces shown here are landscapes: Panorama is a landscape from the perspective of a viewer at the centre, of life spreading out from a vantage point. Inside iteration shows an internal landscape of a time passed – claustrophobic, intense, cyclical, but (thankfully) not unending.

Facebook:       samtraffordart

Instagram:       @sam.trafford

The viscous malicious crab – 23 x 35 x 35cm – $495.00

The crab sculptures are handmade using vintage repurposed cotton and teas towels, that are then printed, painted and inked, into female faces. They are then stitched, stuffed and assembled into the crab like creatures you see in the images.

The crab is asking the viewer to self-reflect on human nature. The creatures represent the earth, and the audience is the sky. The reflective stand off will hopefully inspire a range of emotions, from fondness and memory in the use of soft vintage textiles, represented in a soft sculpture, to unease and foreboding in the strange unnatural creatures. In this work I have flipped the narrative on its head, and I ask the viewer to confront the truth about their own natures. 

Facebook:     samanthathompsonartist

Instagram:     @samanthathompsonartist

Shattered – Vase – 21h x 20w x 20d cm – $650 | Bowl – 7 x 17cm – $400 | Urn – 17 x 17.3cm – $550 | Dish – 7h x 15cm – $350

Reclaimed ceramics, recycled eco-dyed silk shirts and cotton thread are handstitched to portray the 2019/20 fires which destroyed vast areas, devasting eco systems and shattering lives. The landscape has been consumed and numerous lives lost, leaving communities reeling from the shock. 

Work has now turned to the welfare of those impacted. Such experiences are never forgotten, remaining part of us always.  As seasons pass, we will find ourselves marvelling at the first green growth against the black backdrop of our burnt country. Lives will be slowly stitched back together with missing pieces remaining, be they people, property or possession.

Textile Kinstugi – Honour the Past, Create the Future – 

Blue Vase – 37h x 16 x 16cm – $750 | Camellia – 25h x 13 x 13cm – $550 | Hemp – 17h x 12.5 x 12.5cm – $500 | Crane – 21h x 11 x 11cm – $550 | Covered bowl – 15h x 18 x 18 – NFS | Grey dish – 7h x 16 x 16cm – $400 | Yellow dish – 6h x 13.5 x 13.5 – $350

In this time of pandemic, the Kitsugi technique has been used to represent the changes being experienced as our lives are altered in so many ways. Once over, lives will be stitched back together with missing pieces remaining.

In creating my Textile Kinstugi pieces I use the principles of Kinstugi, a Japanese repair method, as a process to recreate discarded ceramics. Using reclaimed Japanese kimono textile pieces, to wrap broken pieces and reassemble them with stitch, enhancing the breaks. As with Kinstugi I aim to celebrate the imperfections, recreating the ceramic to become more interesting for its irregularities giving the object a new lease of life that becomes more refined thanks to its ‘scars’. 

Website:        karhina.com

Facebook:     karhina.textileart

Instagram:     @tamararussellart

Personal Diffraction Shields #26 #28 and #29 – 80 x 80 x 10cm (160 x 80 x 10cm with stand) – $2500 each

Works were produced In the summers of 2019 and 2020 responding to place and linking the threads of my art-making with Italy and West Africa. Working in an a disused telephone exchange (the ‘Balmoral Post Office Studio’) in the Western Districts, I wove intimate connections between these different geographic locations.

Practising in isolation many hours each day, being ‘at hand’ in the sense of working manually and ‘sensing’ my way into the local environment, the experience was of of re-connection.

Through the local ‘Chameleon Arts Collective’, I was introduced to residents who offered materials with which the shields were composed: home spun wools, commercial wools and cottons, plastics, fabrics, old letters and photos, clothes, magazines, talismanic rocks and twigs. Nothing was purchased, so they act as mementos of time-place.

These shields are a continuation from a previous 25 fabricated/exhibited in West Africa and Italy – By continuing in Balmoral, a personal and symbolic narrative between three continents is enacted.

Both the past and present meet in the circle form, interweaving possibilities somewhere between the hidden and the apparent. Major events (bushfires and the earliest concerns about Covid 19) suggest themselves in my practise.

Website:        www.virginiaryan.com

Instagram:     @virginiaryanartist