SECOND LOOK : response, remade & experimental textiles
Wednesday 2 October to Sunday 20 October 2024
11.00am – 5.00pm
SECOND
LOOK includes works by
Boni Cairncross, Ro Cook, Michele Elliot, Nicole Ellis, Blake Griffiths, Vivien Haley, Beth Hatton, Cecilia Heffer, Chris Hutch, Brenda Livermore, Christina Newberry, Lisa Pang, Barbara Rogers, Jane Théau, Nina Walton, Liz Williamson, Melinda Young
Wednesday 2 October to Sunday 20 October 2024
Organisers: Michele Elliot, Barbara Rogers, Liz Williamson, Melinda Young
SECOND LOOK: response, remade and experimental textiles reflects on how handmade textiles are made, archived, used and reused by makers.
This is the third in the SECOND LOOK exhibition series, where artists focus on remaking and experimenting.
In this iteration, they make new works from existing textiles - old, found, gifted, scavenged, archived, repurposed – to give these materials a second life.
Each artist brings their individual concerns or interests to the project, be it sustainability, wellbeing, repurposing, conserving materials or making do. Experimenting with materials is fundamental to their creative practice.
Barometer Gallery
13 Gurner Street, Paddington NSW 2021
barometer.net.au
For enquiries, please contact the Gallery on look@barometer.net.au
A Woven Life
A Tribute to Liz Williamson (1949 – 2024)
The Second Look exhibition is the third of a series of contemporary textile shows first conceived by Liz Williamson in 2021 in collaboration with Barbara Rogers.
The curatorial vision invited artists to revisit an earlier work and give it a second life. Each year, the brief had a different focus, allowing us to explore a range of concerns through our specialist techniques. To receive an invitation from Liz to participate was an honour for artists. Liz embodied the metaphor of weaving as community. Her vision was generous and encompassing, bringing all ages together to showcase contemporary textile practice.
Emails threaded together news on exhibitions, forums, tours, and cultural events in Australia and Internationally — carefully curated woven baskets of knowledge in our inboxes.
Weaver Anni Albers famously described weaving as “the event of the thread,” which aptly aligns with the soirees and open studios Liz held in her extraordinary home in Clarendon Rd, Stanmore.
Visitors would be treated to an insight into her studio practice with ordered shelves of coloured yarn cones and a majestic floor loom. Shades of greens were meticulously placed next to yellows, followed by oranges and reds; purples would move into the famous shades of indigo blue she loved so much.
Liz Williamson: Weaving Eucalypts, her last major exhibition project, illuminates her legacy. Liz gathered naturally dyed silks from makers around Australia and India, weaving each into exquisite individual panels. Collectively, they are deeply human, speaking a universal material language of pattern, colour, and diversity.
Thank you, Liz. We are so grateful to have been part of your woven life, for inspiring us, and for paving the way for the next generation of contemporary textile artists in Australia.
Cecilia Heffer October, 2024
Portrait: Liz Williamson, by Angus Lee-Forbes, 2018 (Courtesy of Australian Design Centre)
Boni Cairncross
Beyond The Night
2023
Wool.
Slow Morning 2023
Wool and viscose.
Afternoon Drive
2023
Wool and viscose.
That Moment 2023 Viscose.
Geometric compositions come together through interventions with found textiles. The cut becomes a key device for reimaging reclaimed and remnant cloth. Working along the lines of existing pleats, folds and flaws, the wool and viscose are dismantled into tiny pieces, reconfigured and stitched into new pairings and patterns that speak to the shared histories of painting and textiles.
Boni Cairncross is an Australian visual artist. Her art practice explores the intersection of art, feminist histories and the human sensorium. Drawing on the legacies of textiles and performance art, she employs labour-intensive processes, from slow making approaches to durational performance, to examine how tactile knowledges are acquired, shared and extended. Her art practice spans textile-based works, installation and performance.
Boni was awarded a PhD in Creative Practice from the University of New South Wales in 2019. Her creative work has been presented widely throughout Australia and her art practice is informed by artist-research residencies in Australia, Mexico, Greece and Peru. Boni lives and works on Dharawal Country (Illawarra NSW) and is a Lecturer in Visual Arts at the University of Wollongong.
www.bonicairncross.com
@boni__________
Photo: Jessica Maurer
Ro Cook
In Memoriam 2018/2024
Block and screen print on hand loomed Thai hemp, indigo dye, synthetic print paste.
347cm x 34cm
216cm x 35cm
209cm x 34cm
Photo: Courtesy of the artist
The news of Liz Williamson’s recent passing came as a shock to the textile, craft, design and education communities. This loss has reverberated with many individuals. Those who had met or worked with Liz were devastated by the loss of an esteemed colleague, a dear friend and valued mentor.
Ro Cook has reflected on this year’s Sydney Craft Week theme of ‘response’ and made In Memoriam using motifs from a 2018 exhibition, Absent Friends The screen-printed piece is getting a ‘Second Look’ in this work. New works have been created on hand loomed hemp fabrics, they have been natural indigo dyed and hand printed with blocks carved in India, while on tours with Liz.
The colour palette reflects Liz’s signature black and blue clothing and the length of the centre drop represents an ongoing legacy and presence of Liz’s work and influence.
Ro Cook is a printer and lover of textiles. She lives west of Sydney in the beautiful Blue Mountains on Dharug and Gundungurra country and shares her life with family, friends and her over-loved Bedlington Terriers.
leaves: babri, fence/field, grit, lumen, metiabaruz, mustang, peetal ghara/ ganna, rooftop is a series of embroidered handkerchiefs that were made during the Covid lockdowns. Based on notebook drawings, each object was observed and recorded while overseas. These small speculative drawings to stitchings became a free associative daydreaming practice; read, draw, stitch, think, read, write, stitch. A meandering of memory activated by the hand drawn while sheltering in place, with one more added this spring, completing the circle. Here, and there.
Michele Elliot is a visual artist, educator and occasional writer living and working on Wodi Wodi Country. Her practice spans sculpture, installation, textiles and drawing. Michele’s artworks encompass material explorations
in relation to human connectivity, mapping and memory. She exhibits locally and across Australia. Her most recent exhibition of new works, what is held, is here, at Wollongong Art Gallery in 2024 received funding support from Creative Australia.
www.micheleelliot.com
@michele_elliot_artist
Photo: Nina Kourea
Michele Elliot
Nicole Ellis
Nicole Ellis has exhibited widely and undertaken residencies in Australia and internationally. Recent exhibitions include Nicole Ellis Fabrications, Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra and Australian Abstraction in Context, Macquarie University, 2024.
Nicole uses found materials, such as industrial textiles, fabric swatches, printed papers and urban refuse to construct paintings, sculptures, books and videos.
Nicole reconfigures deteriorated and worn materials through collage, imprint and impression, privileging their tactility, affect and haptic sensibility. Her art discloses an interest in issues of culture and history, archaeology and architecture. It also questions ideas of painting, textiles and modern abstraction.
‘Faded and Down Home’, was made for the exhibition: Flag Wavering, 2016. The work reflects on the national symbol of the U.S.A, and what laid beneath the American Project throughout the Presidential election in 2016. It is appropriate to show the work again this year, as we approach another American election. The work presents a deconstructed form of the American flag using found textiles and wooden poles.
www.nicoleellis.com.au
@ellisn5090
Faded and Down Home
2016
Cotton strips on wood, loose cotton pieces.
241cm x 2.5cm each
Photo: Document Photography
Blake Griffiths
Blake Griffiths is an artist, curator, and facilitator who focuses on working with textiles. His practice is informed by a research interest in textile thinking, particularly the interpretive potential of the warp and weft to understand oppositions and divides.
This work, Categorical Net, formed part of a series of sculptural light installations exhibited in the Far West of NSW in 2019 as part of the temporary gallery, Cosmopolitan Decline. Here, the nets have been cut and stretched creating a tension between the warp and weft that runs in opposing directions between the two sides of the canvas. Categorical Net (stretched)
The work uses a fine paper twine with a cotton warp to make a light, translucent fabric. It is the spaces between the warp and weft that qualify this fabric as netting.
www.blakegriffiths.com
@blakegriffiths_
Woven paper, cotton.
66cm x 77cm
Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Hand
175cm
Microbes are the earliest forms of life, but recent evidence suggests microscopic fossils on meteorites could oxygenate oceans and atmospheres. In this work, the dyeing and printing convey an erupting sky, a sandy landscape. Ovoids, a symbol of earth, a muddy pool or desert. A shell and leaf emerge or are in decline. Stitching a vestige of what is and once was. The tearing of silk and sewing on canvas is a metaphor for disruption and regeneration.
Vivien Haley studied sculpture and printmaking at the National Art School, Sydney. Living for some 30 years in the Illawarra escarpment, daily observation developed an insight into the natural world, enabling her to work intuitively, creating a narrative, a place in time.
During her career she has taught in professional and educational arts programmes, and exhibited in solo and selected shows within public and private galleries and museums, around Australia and overseas.
www.vivienhaley.com
@vivienhaley
Vestige #1 2023
dyed, block and monoprinted silk; drawing and hand stitched onto canvas.
x 113cm
Photo: Barbara Rogers
Vivien Haley
Early settlers used stencils to label produce, including wool bales. In this rug, stencil lettering spells out the names of native species made extinct by colonists. Paradoxically, some native animals, like the kangaroo, flourished after settlement. source my materials from contemporary urban factories where kangaroo meat and skins are processed. The rugs combine the native skins with sheep’s wool, one of Australia’s most prized introduced species. We must balance ongoing requirements for commodities with our need to preserve healthy, diverse ecosystems. All elements of our world are interdependent, linked to each other just as imagery and materials are interwoven in my work.
am interested in textile history, the meanings of materials and recycling, and focus on the impact of colonisation on the Australian environment.
My interest is in parallel to Canadian settlement history, which is part of my history. My work has been shown across Australia and internationally, and is represented in major public collections including the National Gallery of Australia. Since moving to Australia I base my practice in Annandale, on Gadigal and Wangal land.
warwickhatton@gmail.com
Beth Hatton
(2nd Series)
Loom-woven tapestry. Kangaroo skin offcuts, wool and red cotton thread on cotton warp.
x 90cm x 1 cm
Photo: Ian Hobbs
Cecilia Heffer
Tide 2010/2024 (revisited)
Organza, machine and hand stitching onto a soluble substrate, eucalyptus and acid dye, pigment silkscreen print, cotton thread.
172cm x 63cm
Tide investigates spatial qualities unique to lace, giving material form to the ephemeral and intangible observed in a landscape. I recently moved to the south coast, Dharawal land. Everything is new; my senses are soaking up a new environment with fresh eyes. In this work, I have revisited an earlier piece created in 2010 from time spent in Wamberal Beach on the Central Coast.
The original circular lace motifs were traced from stones collected on my walks; their delicate markings represented through silkscreen printing and natural dye. Now, I gaze at new geologies held in the palm of my hand. In the older work, the history of my gestures (walking and stitching) serves as a ground to hold a new material terrain. The new surface is highlighted through further hand stitching and embellishment to create a novel (p)lace marker.
Cecilia is a senior lecturer at the University of Technology, Sydney. In 2022, she completed a PhD from RMIT exploring contemporary lace as an ephemeral (p)lacemaker. Commissions include the lace curtains for Government House NSW and an installation for the Museum of Democracy Canberra. Acquisitions, Powerhouse Museum, the NGV, Art Bank, Museum Centrale Textiles, Lódz Poland, Tamworth and Wangaratta Regional Galleries.
www.ceciliaheffer.com
@cecilia_heffer
Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Chris Hutch
Not Now, Not Ever!
linen and cotton doilies, cotton backing, cotton embroidery threads.
15 pieces, approximately 20cm x 20cm each
This work was made in response to the book, Not Now, Not Ever written by Julia Gillard and others, reflecting on the tenth anniversary of Gillard’s misogyny speech to Parliament in October 2012. I was reading this book at the same time as participating in public demonstrations against domestic violence against women and children. Upset and inspired by these two events, I took up my weapons of choice, a needle and thread and produced these works.
Vintage doilies have been used, both giving them another life, and showing that domestic objects usually found in the realm of the feminine can be used to deliver a feminist message. There are fifteen pieces here, one for each of Ms Gillard’s years in Parliament.
Chris Hutch has worked in many areas of arts and crafts, both individually and in community groups. Her current exploration of textiles involves the collection of vintage domestic linens and their re-use by cropping, collaging, dyeing and overstitching.
Photo: Courtesy of the artist
@hutch_chris
Brenda Livermore
I enjoy working with paper and pushing the boundaries of paper as a material. My sculpture explores themes or subjectsoften landscape related - that have left a strong impression on me, things that need to be celebrated and highlighted, personally and globally; things I want to understand more fully. The long processes involved in my work allow for deep, quiet periods of immersive making, contemplation, and meditation.
This work begins with my connection to the rolling farmland landscape where grew up. Exploring the colours and textures, using materials that are already rich with their own history. A history of painting, printmaking and mark making, materials collected over time, too precious to discard but also not clear in their purpose.
It has been extremely satisfying to use them in this new work - and suspect a series of related landscape works.
Brenda Livermore has been a finalist in a number of significant art prizes including Australian Design Centre Make Award, Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award, North Sydney Art Prize & Meroogal Women’s Art Prize. Winner of the Seed Stitch Contemporary Art Award, and International Australian Textile Biennale’s Excellence Award. Her work is held in both private and public collections.
@brenda_livermore
Of this Place 2024
Paper, print, paint, mark making, thread, wrapping.
40cm x 60cm
Photo: Janet Tavener
Christina Newberry
Obsolescence - the process of becoming outdated and no longer used. Is it possible to find a new purpose for items that have undergone this process? In addressing this issue, Newberry has taken a disused pianola roll and used the slots to weave through strips of outdated colour charts.
Where once the slots determined the tune played, now colour creates a new vibration. Many artists made the connection between sonic vibrations and colour, such as Kandinsky and Sonia Delaunay. For Delaunay, colour was language, and every sound had its own tone and hue.
Christina Newberry is a Sydney artist whose practice has a history of embracing sustainability. Her work is interdisciplinary including sculpture, collage, expanded painting, embroidery and awardwinning wearable art. Newberry sources recycled materials/objects which are then transformed using skills such as deconstruction/reconstruction, assemblage and hand-embroidery, to define new and innovative forms. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally.
www.christinanewberry.net
@christinanewberry
Rag Medley
Charmaine
2020 - 2024
Varnished pianola roll with woven acrylic paint strips and metal weights; woven and collaged.
28.5cm x 220cm
Photos: Courtesy of the artist
Lisa Pang
Summertime
2023 - 2024
Cotton and silk sakiori
weaving made on a backstrap loom with antique timber Japanese bobbin and domestic woven straw utensils.
45cm x 200cm x 2.5 cm
Wintertime
2023 - 2024
Cotton and silk sakiori
weaving made on a backstrap loom, with antique timber Japanese bobbin and timber domestic utensils.
37cm x 210cm x 2.5 cm
These sakiori (rag) weavings were made on a backstrap loom while was living between Australia and Japan. This primitive form of loom was a liberating way of working, as my studio could be rolled up to travel with me. All that is required is the tension of my body and something solid to attach to, whatever the season or place.
The warps are persimmon dyed silk thread gifted by my teacher from hand reared silkworms, and the warps are a mixture of silk and cotton strips torn from worn kimono and futon pieces. Domestic utensils are incorporated so that the final piece is a hybrid assemblage of various forms of labour. The form, palette, reused materials, and process itself enabled a meditation on the function of the art object, its presentation in changing spaces, and perceptions about the place of domestic work and crafts.
Lisa is a Borneo-born artist, writer and curator living and working on Darug land in Sydney. She has exhibited in Australia, Japan and Europe and has a particular interest in non-objective art, handmade textiles, and alternative art platforms. Following a career as a lawyer, Lisa now holds a BFA (Hons) from the National Art School.
https://issuu.com/jolibeol @jolibeol
Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Barbara Rogers
Rhythms
2012/2019/2024
Silk satin,
65cm x 220cm x 20cm (3 separate layers)
For this iteration of Second Look, Barbara Rogers has taken a different direction with her work. Barbara has created an entirely new piece whilst still using the shibori techniques for which she is well known.
Working with over thirty years of accumulated dyed shibori fabrics, Barbara has stitched, cut, re-assembled, recut, and re-assembled again to make wholly new work. Seams play a prominent role in the overall design and are emphasized rather than hidden. The silk has been dyed and undyed using clamp resist, and pieces have been joined with a triple stitched Korean technique known as gekki. Barbara has then constructed the pieces into a triple layered textile, hanging to create its own shadow patterns. The various widths of stripe, together with the fabric overlays, produce a moiré effect within the work.
An abstract formula: stripes and spacing, repeating or inter-connecting.
Barbara Rogers is a Sydney based textile artist. She studied Dress Design and worked in the fashion industry for many years. She now makes individual pieces using shibori, an ancient Japanese resist dye technique. Barbara is represented in several major international publications on textiles and has participated in many group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally.
Conflagration (2) responds to the 2020 bushfires that surrounded Jane’s house on the South Coast. Made from tarlatan originally used to wipe red ink off an etching plate, found in the garbage bins at Cicada Press printmaking studio; Jane has worked with the random patterns from the wiping process to create this image of the inferno. Wounded Turquoise is also made of tarlatan from the Cicada Press bin, these scraps were too rich in colour to throw away.
The Wealth Net comprises a gold-plated piece of flotsam that once cradled a glass fishing float; and a hand-knotted horsehair and gold thread net. Originally used to describe a tangible object of entrapment, ‘net’ is now also synonymous with the world wide web, facilitator of communication, consumption, work and play, a domain that is virtual rather than handmade, and a generator of immense wealth for those
who exploit it. This work alludes to the new net that has totally changed society.
Jane Théau is the founder of Textiles Sydney and a sustainability activist, her practice encompasses sculpture, installation, performance, curation, and community art. She has been the recipient of numerous awards and residencies in Australia and overseas. She has a PhD from ANU, a Master of International Affairs, Columbia University, and a Bachelor of Applied Science, UTS.
@janetheau
Nina Walton
Spring 2023 is made using the thread recovered from an ongoing dynamic installation at BTWNLNS in Sydney. Each season I make a new wall installation in the same space using cotton thread attached to acrylic frames that are drilled into the wall. At the end of each season, this thread painting is destroyed, making way for the new.
Most of the thread for the work exhibited here came from the Spring 2023 installation, marking an outgrowth and an extension from the original piece, a renewal of life in a different form.
Nina Walton is an Australian visual artist.
Working across the mediums of textiles, painting, drawing, installation, performance and books, Nina’s practice sits within a tradition of conceptual art and abstraction that uses predetermined rules to generate work, with the grid operating as a basic organising principle.
www.ninawalton.com
@ninawalton__
Spring 2023 2023
Thread on canvas.
76cm x 56cm
Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Melinda Young
The Storyholder (a vessel from the table)
2023 – 2024
Deconstructed, corded and coiled ‘heil’ brand Polish linen tablecloth depicting Australian wildflowers, vintage thread spool.
Dimensions variable
The Placeholder (carried to the table)
2024
Deconstructed, corded and looped ‘heil’ brand Polish linen tablecloth depicting Australian wildflowers.
Dimensions variable
Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Imagine a journey across oceans, from Australia to the other side of the world.
Images of Australian wildflowers, strange and exotic, are printed there, onto woven Polish linen. A cloth for a table.
The tablecloth travels back to Australia, where it is sold as a souvenir, before making its way again, back around the world as a gift. Used on the table for best, a silent witness to the ebb and flow of a family’s life and times. Later, it returns to Australia to start a new life as a treasured memory of the spaces and people it has held together. After adorning the table, it has a brief moment as a garment.
Threadbare now, it is gifted again. No longer fit for purpose, perhaps you can use it?
Deconstructed, thread by thread, the fragile fibres are hand twisted until a tiny vessel emerges, and then a small, netted bag.
Together they hold traces of the tablecloth’s stories - about place, family, migration, and the flowers.
Melinda Young lives and works on Dharawal Country. Her research-based practice spans jewellery, objects and intimately scaled textiles reflecting experiences of being in, and understanding place. Exhibiting extensively in Australia and internationally since 1997, her work is held in public collections and included in numerous publications.
www.melindayoung.net
@unnaturaljeweller
@madebymelindayoung
Thanks to –
Barometer Gallery for presenting SECOND LOOK
All exhibitors for responding to the brief with interesting works
Barbara Rogers and Liz Williamson for organising SECOND LOOK
