Motherlode

I give form to what has been silenced but is held in our bodies and imaginings. This work began with learning how mitochondrial DNA carries the matrilineal legacy from mother to daughter down through the generations. I stitch copper wire in visceral colour to create a matrix of cellular forms recalling the enduring maternal that creates us all. Symbols knitted in wire stand in for the lost names, faces and stories of a female family tree. The materials and techniques I use tell as much of the story as the forms themselves. Copper wire is pliable yet strong, and it also holds memory. The slow process of building an artwork one stitch at a time feels comforting and meaningful, connecting me with women’s precious labour and care.

An installation exploring forms of knowledge about the Upper Loddon catchment waterways, incorporating my sculptures and embossed prints, and a video projection created by Chi-uh Star.

Opening event Saturday 12th October 1-3pm. All welcome!

Linda White's exhibition at GalleryGallery Inc is on now, and includes small sculptures by makers and artists who accepted the open invitation to use random fabric scraps to make a work, with proceeds going to Change the Record (an organisation campaigning against children and young people being held in custody).

Linda's work uses textiles to compile alternative historical documents that tell the story of colonisation by the British empire.

Open Saturdays 10am- 4pm or by appointment

You are invited to the exhibition opening event on Saturday 20 July, 1-3pm

‘Mirror, mirror’ is part of the Textile Palette 2024 exhibition at The Warehouse, Clunes, from 6th-28th April.

‘Septum’ and ‘Sanctum’, two of my knitted wire works from the Salpinx Collection, have been selected for Museu Textil’s ‘Threads of Tomorrow’ online exhibition (they are visible on the far left of this screenshot). Museu Textil was founded in Brazil and is now based in New Orleans.

‘Chrysalids’ continues my practice of using textile techniques to explore the joys, troubles and puzzles of everyday life. Knitting, shaping and layering fine-gauged coloured copper and brass wire creates a wire ‘fabric’, delicate and transparent as lace but strong enough to hold firm. In this small, multilayered knitted wire sculpture, two symbiotically joined forms reach out to each other yet retain their own colourful identities. The sculpture evokes growth, but also perhaps ambivalence and discomfort.

My work in this exhibition is titled ‘Child’s Play’. It is a ‘bricollage’ sculpture assembled from archived materials including letters and primary school project books, as well as various woven wire amulets. It turns a toolbox into a toybox, based on the powerful idea expressed by author and psychoanalyst Siri Hustvedt that “the space between the ‘I’ and the ‘other’ is where the child plays and the artist works”.

‘Fugitive’ is a frottage print (rubbing) of a 2D wire weaving entitled ‘Athena’ (2020, coloured copper wire, h.199cm x w.97cm). In the graphite rubbing of this earlier work an outline of my body is merged with the lacy patterns left by the knitted and looped wire of the original. Around this main image is the remainder of the original woven wire form that has been faintly embossed into the rice-paper by rubbing without graphite. This is an ephemeral work, the paper’s fragility showing marks of each handling as well as the memory of the original artwork. Within the layered marks left by this process are questions about what is gained by concealment versus display, by protection versus risk, and by the ritual of making itself.

Craft Lab 23 - ‘Light and Dark’ - Ballarat Heritage Festival

After showing my large Athena piece last year, Ballarat Craft Lab has again invited me to participate. A selection of my knitted wire sculptures from ‘The Salpinx Collection’ will be included in the Craft Lab exhibition.

This 4-day event (running over two weekends) is a wonderful showcase of contemporary expressions of traditional artisan skills.

WE ARE CLOSED FOR THE FINAL WEEKEND DUE TO ILLNESS. APOLOGIES FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE.

Our Open Studio, ‘Shards and Whispers’, showcases diverse methods but shares a common sensibility: picking up lost threads, taking pains with detail, creating a world of small things with big heart.

Deb Lemcke’s contemporary textiles honour her own and other’s experiences with carefully chosen materials and slow stitching.

Photographer Lorena Carrington continues to bring us her intricate other-worldly compilations in cyanotypes, prints and publications.

Margaret Landvogt’s pastel paintings distill the essence of the remembered places where she fell in love with the flora and landscapes of her adopted country.

I continue my exploration of wire and textile techniques, along with the occasional found object, to create playful sculptures that I hope will soothe and/or intrigue.

Open: 10am – 4pm, Saturdays and Sundays during Festival

For enquiries or appointments outside scheduled hours: Ph. 0437 202 804 (Kathy Landvogt)

My entry in the Newstead Sculpture Prize is titled Yaluk Learning (Upper Loddon).

This suspended sculpture is composed of capillary-like wire tracery, modelled on a map of the upper reaches of the Loddon River. The Earth’s resources connect us all through custodianship, especially as competition for them sharpens. It is perhaps water that most highlights our interdependence. The early pastoralist-invaders of this region settled along the waterways that were also “the very spots most valuable to the Aborigines [the Dja Dja Wurrung people] for their productiveness” said Protector Parker at the time . Waterways are part of our ‘commons’ even under our Western settler laws because they cannot be privately owned below the upper level of the lower bank.

I traced these creeks and rivers in wire to learn more about the land I live on, much as 18th century Englishwomen painstakingly stitched map samplers to learn geography. But maps have historically often been used to assert truth or claim ownership, so while still composed of all the elements, the work is no longer an ‘accurate’ representation. Instead, it holds airy spaces that invite us to look into, not at, the river system.

My response to ‘My Heart is a Little Wild Thing’ by Nigel Featherstone was selected for the Biblio Art Prize, and a bonus - used for their postcard!

Complications' is a small wire sculpture that is part-heart, part-puzzle. Is it representing rupture, or rapture? Both are core to this story of a middle-aged queer man seeking authenticity in his life and retreating to the unique landscape of the Monaro. The piece is constructed through a looping technique traditional in fibre textiles, but used here with the non-traditional material of wire, enabling it to hold 'memory'. I have contrasted cold, tough stainless steel wire against more malleable copper wire in the visceral colours of red and magenta, to suggest the struggle between self-constraint and real emotional connection. The work is designed to be suspended off the wall in its own space, just as Patrick is searching for his own place in the world.

Divisions Gallery is proud to present 're/order'.

Five artists bringing textiles into new territory.

Using traditional approaches, the quilts, baskets, sculptures and weavings in ‘re/order’ demonstrate technique whilst pushing the boundaries of textiles.

The Petite Miniature Textiles 2022 is held at Gallery 1, Wangaratta Art Gallery.

It features contemporary small textile artworks by selected Australian artists exploring a diverse range of techniques.

'Athena' will be exhibited at the annual Ballarat Heritage Festival as part of the Craft Lab 22.

When: 21 & 22 MAY, and 28 & 29 MAY - 10AM TILL 5PM

Where: BALLARAT MINING EXCHANGE, 12 LYDIARD STREET NORTH, BALLARAT

FREE ENTRY

Stitching Change brings together the work of contemporary Victorian textile artists and invited submissions reflecting the wide range of works related to the medium. Stitching Change is an exhibition highlighting the abundance of textile artists in Victoria and showcases the progressive art form of textiles including work that explores the relationship of textiles to other art disciplines.

350 Johnston St Abbotsford, Victoria, Australia

8th February to 14th March 2020

The Letter Project
Letters lay hoarded in bundles and interred in shoeboxes. An airletter’s existence – inscribed with the hand of friend or family and sent across the world c/o Poste Restante, so light and strong – makes memory tangible. Yet the words are unexpectedly redundant; it is something else that endures. These letters say how we cared when we took time over connecting. Handwritten letters are counter-cultural now. 

Does it add to the world to keep these artefacts of a predigital age and youthful adventure? 

Small actions matter. These human traces are to be treasured, honoured. Each piece made is a long meditation on the writer and our relationship, the stitches connecting us again. The letters are torn up now, reincarnated as votive vessels that hold more than memories.