making and unmaking

I was given this old hand stitched wedding dress to do something with… and it’s very confronting! I have never believed in marriage and don’t like wedding dresses but there is wonderful details and the heaviness of the satin in contrast with the tulle does ignite a few ideas about building castles in the air with dreams or planting it in the garden and growing a meadow of wildflowers through it… and brings to mind my fabulous sculptor friend Bronwyn Berman’s great reply to a conversation we were having via e-mail about making it in the art world;
“And what is made it or almost made it? My experience is that we make it then we unmake it. I think I’ve made it more than once but thought I hadn’t made it so kept wanting to make it, then when it had been unmade again I realised that I had made and not appreciated it, then think that really what I have now is making it then think I’m a deluded ‘has been’ who is too old to ever make it, and in any case couldn’t be bothered with too much of making it. I think we’re probably always making it, as soon as we make it the unmaking begins and when we’re unmade then we start making again.”
button detail, love the loops & the stains on the satin
hand stitching on acres of tulle for the train
unmaking this dress and transforming it into the stuff of dreams, perhaps even art will be a challenge but this is a start !

Woven in Winter at Sturt Gallery

Woven in Winter at Sturt Gallery
woven forms in basketry, textiles and ceramics
June 11- July 23
Keiko Amenomori-Schmeisser/ Bronwyn Berman/ Patrice Cooke/ Karen Farrell/ Tracy Luff/ Tracey Mitchell/ Brooke Munro/ Catriona Pollard/ Shona Wilson
in the foreground is the amazing Pod forms of Tracy Luff made out of cardboard, hessian and wood
Woven in Winter gallery view
Bronwyn Berman with her woven wonders Reacher, Spindle & Seeker in the window
Spindle copper, casuarina root
Seeker copper, casuarina root, embedded river stone
Patrice Cooke
Fragile Fan and Silent Veins earthenware paperclay
Wall Piece I-IV porcelain
Patrice Cooke
Web Dreams earthenware paperclay
Keiko Amenomori-Schmeisser
Resting shibori & Japanese natural indigo dye on linen
Karen Farrell
Nesting Sites for Forlorn Species
stoneware, satin & crackle glazes, oxides
interwoven with palm fibre, pine needles, shell, silk fibres
Brooke Munro
Passing timber, wire
Shona Wilson
Diatom No.4 norfolk pine, seedpods, plastic
Diatom no.4 detail
Bronwyn Berman
Breathe in love through the heart
handmade paper, lyrebird feathers, echidna quills, beadslichen by mother nature

listening & learning

Holding Space, Weaving Place a yarning stick workshop and story telling gathering at the Australian Museum
Wiradjuri Elder Aunty Gail, Wailwan and Yuin man Millmullian (Laurance Magick Dennis) and Wiradjuri/Ngemba woman Nyimirr (Fleur Magick Dennis) showed us how to wrap the yarning sticks, add feathers and seed pods then Laura McBride, an amazing young woman with two degrees who is the curator for the First Australian Galleries sat with us & spoke eloquently about oh so many things… great food for thought, I especially enjoyed her analogy of how to hold space when the going gets tough like an echidna & just wait it out… Australia’s First People are so kind & generous with their sharing of culture, we enjoyed the listening & hope to see a treaty made respecting the rights of the people of this ancient land who have lived here for 50,000 years
Holding Space, Weaving Place is on again today and tomorrow from 1-4pm

Mystic City by Gabrielle Bates

Mystic City Talismanic Memory Map by Gabrielle Bates
Artist Statement : At a time of significant change within our cities, can weaving together place-based politics, memory and contemporary Witchcraft reframe the way in which we value our homes and urban environments? Mystic City by Gabrielle Bates creatively investigates how magical rituals and objects associated with Witchcraft might challenge the profit-driven processes of gentrification and urban development.
Bone Broom I by Gabrielle Bates
Bones, twigs collected from Sydney Park trees now destroyed
Bone Broom II by Gabrielle Bates
Home Protection Amulet by Gabrielle Bates
Home Protection Amulet by Gabrielle Bates
all sales of the Home Protection Amulets go toward the legal fees for protesters charged with defending trees in Sydney Park
Talismanic Memory Maps 1-12 by Gabrielle Bates
mixed media including bones, carved timber, bark, twine, coffin nails, twigs, beads, dog fur, dice, seedpods, feathers, sap of destroyed trees, frustration scratches of GenYs who will never own a home, and the anxiety sweat of residents living near WestCONnex construction sites
Gabrielle’s powerful magic at Chrissie Cotter Gallery finishes today
our fragile old lady of a house is in grave danger from the proposed 8 lane WestCONnex tunnel going right under our street, we need all the magic we can muster!

a one line poem by Grace of Windthread

this morning I finished embroidering Grace of Windthread’s beautiful one line poem for the Full Moon
“We are burning Karma and it smells like incense…”
tonight I will stitch grape vine tendrils to the ends of the steel twigs
vintage silk ribbon stitched with indigo and pomegranate dyed silk from Glennis Dolce
inktense coloured pencil with red silk
this morning I edged it with ochre stained hand plied plant fibre string from a Yam Totem Arnhem Land 1976
to honour our beautiful muse Ariel P Cat 1999-2017PS grape vine tendrils inserted into the ends of the steel twigs, wrapped in eelskin, stitched with black linen thread & black glass beads
photo taken with a flash at dawn as the weather is overcast today

The Dark Matters at White Rabbit Gallery

Richard and Old Man Crow exploring 100s of hand cut objects in  Grinding (2013-16) by Yang Mushi
The Dark Matters at White Rabbit Gallery
Richard photographing the zeppelin blowing up in this surreal multilayered photo-video-“painting”
Infinite Landscape 2011 by Yang Yongliang
“The ancients used landscape to convey feeling,” he says. “I use landscape to criticize society”
sublimely carved marble reflecting in AIP-PF (2004) by Chang Nai-Wen
Water Drops (2014) by Kung Wen-Yi and Ko Yu-Cheng
“The artists (each of whom made half the work) celebrate rain as an analogy for the creative imagination. Just as water is the universal solvent and the source of life, they say, so the imagination is an all embracing source of ideas, which must be contained and channeled just as water is.”
beautiful, deep, sublime
so much to reflect on

Manly Artists’ Book Award 2017

“A Tentative Conversation” Mo16
accordion book
260cm W x 17cm H
grape vine tendrils, graphite, ink, gouache, thread, watercolour paper, Japanese Abaca paper
Artist’s Statement: making an opening for listening
was selected for the Manly Artists’ Book Award 2017, this was my third try at this show, “An illuminated Book of Cats” didn’t make the grade in 2011 & in 2015 “The Spirit Book of the Spirit Books” and “Out of the Blue” didn’t get in either but this one did!
It was a dark and stormy night for the opening… the traffic was appalling, took us two hours to get there (a 45 minute drive when it’s not raining in peak hour) so we arrived just as the awards were being announced. There was some very good work in the show but sadly mine was displayed inside out with the “gates” closed on a low plinth that was too small for the work… I rearranged the piece as best I could considering the position and then Roderick could see it was time to get me out of there before I imploded. He’s such a champion, kept his cool driving there and back again in pouring rain and had me laughing by the time we got home, some gigs are certainly better than others!
On a lighter note Liz Ackert is stitching “imagine peace” onto safety pins and sending them out into the world
her stitching is so exquisitely fine on beautiful old indigo dyed linen, here it is on Grace of Windthread’s “x-roads cloth” with The Pale Rook’s “Fish Bones”Ariel is looking fabulous this morning, his eyes are bright, his coat is shining, he’s eating with gusto, purring madly & running up and down the stairs. He’s still on the non steroidal anti inflammatory pain medication and the blood in his pee is still happening intermittently but he will be with us for a good while yet, he’s such a magic cat!