Re-collection, installation view, Town Hall Gallery, 2017. Linen and cotton fabric (mostly naturally dyed), up-cycled clothing (jeans and workshirts), embroidery thread, works from recent projects 2015 - 2017
Installation Photos: Christian Capurro

Materiality

Materiality focuses on the moments when materials play the lead within artistic process, entangling their audience in a web of connections and meanings. It investigates the role of materiality in art and attempts to expand notions of process, time and place. The artists selected all use materials and processes in a variety of ways. Many use laborious and handmade processes where the work is imbued with a strong sense of meaning and memory. Materiality allows the materials to take centre stage and highlights their importance in the art making process.
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Re-collection is an installation of textile works from recent projects which are re-collected and re-configured. The 'femmage' works continue feminist arts' tradition of reclaiming women’s craft including embroidery, patchwork, and natural dyeing, and applying them in a contemporary art context.

My computer dictionary tells me that ‘recollection’ means “memory”. When I type in ‘re-collection’ it finds “re-col•lect (transitive verb)” and defines this as “1. Regain control of something” and “2. Collect something again”. This suits me perfectly, because I think that Re-collection is a combination of all three of these definitions.

In using bits and pieces of works and materials from various recent projects, which are already fragments of memory, I am collecting again and regaining a control of sorts. I am making new connections and reconnections that already manifest from memory. Some of these memories are of place, some of conversation and all of them explored with the materiality of the linen, cotton, threads and up-cycled clothing I have used, my Dad’s old jeans which have been lovingly mended by my Mum and old workshirts gifted to me by staff at Darebin Parklands who I met as part of an artist residency during 2015/16.