No Woman is an Island, installation view, Blindside, 2017. various sizes, embroidery thread on botanically dyed linen & cotton, 2017.

No Woman is an Island

10 – 27 May 2017
Blindside Gallery, Melbourne

No Woman is an Island was a group exhibition of Australian artists that focused on female experience through the conceptual framework of the ‘female gaze’. Through the eyes of women artists, the exhibition explores the shift in perception that comes with different ages and phases of life. The artists engaged diverse practices to touch on a an array of relationships to womanhood and also explore the theme of woman as Object vs Subject – thereby challenging, complicating, and confronting the traditional notion of a ‘male gaze’ in art.
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Intensively threaded is a series of five small hand-stitched textile works. The works explores connection and the way “fragments from varying sources collide in the world and in our heads.” *

Pieces and parts of place become fragmented snapshots of memory. An exact moment, usually whilst travelling, is remembered through these intimate objects. I store feelings, thoughts, circumstances and the mood of a view as a multi-sensory snapshot. These elements are recalled and rendered as shape and colour through sketches during moments of solitude, usually a few days later. Finally a version of the sketch is transferred through the contemplative act of hand-stitching onto hand-patched pieces of naturally dyed fabric. I stitch when and where I can, in and amongst my roles as mother, daughter, wife, sister, friend, colleague, research student, and artist. While the detail and intensity of the stitching is considered and slow, I aim to recapture the flash of joy and clarity of the original intense moment.

This suite of works draws from a variety of sources and continues feminist art’s tradition of reclaiming woman’s craft including embroidery, patchwork, and natural dyeing, and applying them in a contemporary art context. Like my use of Instagram these are works that strive to record views as an essence of a moment, yet unlike social media the measured and meditative processes I use expand their time of noticing.

* Italian novelist Elena Ferrante describing her writing in Frantumaglia: A Writer’s Journey