BOUND

The interwoven graphite drawings by North East Victorian artist Beth Peters revealed interconnections, relationships and lived experiences through fabric imagery. As with needlework or embroidery, her methodical and immersive works on paper required patience and attention to detail. In her studio, pencil and paper became devices that recorded the fabric of existence, and this process involves filtering and editing collated moments and experiences into field recordings. Designed to facilitate meditative states, Peters’ repetitive practice allowed the artist to move between conscious and unconscious thought.

Closely was a new work that studied moments of time and space, the meticulous detail of the work invited close examination. In opposition, Look at us asked us to take a step back: this large-scale drawing considered our existence as a collective, and invited individuals to look at what they, and we, are a part of. The blank ream of paper at the base of this work opened a conversation about the ongoing nature of existence.

Stitches was the collected culmination of hand and machine sewn pieces created by members of the Connected Women Sewing Group. The sewing group was established to connect women with refugee backgrounds living in Albury and steadily gained support across the Murray and Riverina. In 2022, the Connected Women Sewing Group had been meeting monthly in Lavington and Wagga Wagga to practice sewing, but also to share settlement stories–a place where members could exchange ideas, experiences and opinions on careers, religion, food and the challenges and barriers to employment when English is a second language.

The sewing group received donated materials and funds to purchase sewing machines by local community groups and sewing associations including CWA members. A partnership with Albury TAFE provided further connections with students in the Adult Migrant Education Program (AMEP). These relationships and conversations were all represented within this large-scale patchwork textile piece.

The Connected Women Sewing Group was delivered by Australian Red Cross Humanitarian Settlement Program Project Officer, Jesmine Coromandel and funded by the Department of Home Affairs.

Janet Bromley is a Yorta Yorta woman and artist based in Bendigo. Using traditional methods, she weaved with recycled clothing, plastic waste, found objects and bush materials. Our Country was the first of three weavings that represented her family. This work was about their deep connection to Country and is reminiscent of the natural and man-made things that she saw woven together while wandering through the bush. An important part of her practice includes sourcing materials from op-shops, asking specifically for materials that these stores may be throwing away entirely. For the weaving Our Country, she sourced materials from an op-shop in her mother’s hometown and collected small swatches of brown material from her mother’s cupboard. Bark, wire, possum skin and clothing are woven together in layers of blue, grey, olive and greens, a selection of colours that Bromley associates with North Central Victoria.

Jade Townsend (Te Āti Haunui-a-Pāparangi, Ngāti Kahungunu) is a visual artist working at the intersection of her Māori, Pākehā and British heritage.

In Homesick / Sickhome the artworks were dynamic arenas for conversations about identity and place. Not quite Māori acting but not quite British either – these works spoke to the unknown and untranslatable parts of cultural hybridity. Each piece was a unique environment made with a combination of gathered debris and tourism souvenirs, reformed and reimagined as “underwater” lures signalling safe passage “home”. Her deep-sea fantasy world referenced Māori pūrākau (mythologies) in which whales, stingray, and mermaids travel great distances to restore their whakapapa (genealogical connections); while discarded plastic bags were stretched to their limits and tested with weights of glass beads to resemble piu piu, a traditional Māori skirt.

Homesick / Sickhome was an interpretation of what it means to exist as a scene of contradictions: simultaneously the native and the tourist when “home”; made up of both “natural” and “synthetic” entities.

I would kiss you on the cheek if you listened to me. I’m tired of pleading with you. was a body of work that focuses on plural identities and feelings of cultural rootlessness. Hodges’ expanded paintings were created by combining found natural objects such as banksia cones and cicada shells, manufactured objects such as fabric sent by their grandmother in Thailand (who was once a dress maker), poetic prose, and traditional paintings. By embracing multiple modes of making such as painting, textiles, and found objects, Hodges’ work resisted easy categorisation and carved out space for plural identities to exist as a unified whole; challenging the view that individuals of mixed heritage are 'caught between two worlds’.

Marg Murray is a weaver and proud Maraura – Barkindji woman. Valda Murray is a weaver and proud Yorta Yorta, Duduroa and Wemba Wemba woman. These local artists are deeply involved in community, sharing cultural knowledge, and building networks and services for future generations. Weaving has become an integral part of their lives and an artistic practice that sustains their relationship to culture and community.

Their woven works have been exhibited extensively across this region and together they facilitate weaving workshops to create connections between people, their history and culture.

Yarning Together was a selection of works that Marg and Valda have made over the past ten years. The differing ways each basket was finished was unique to each artist. The featured lomandra basket was a new collaborative work by Marg and Valda – a process that began by collecting lomandra together, splitting each rush and soaking these in water, allowing the fibres to become pliable for weaving. The basket was completed by passing the work between one another over a period of time.

Serenity Department was a collaborative intergenerational mending project between mother, Maria Ling Qing Huang, who lives in Sydney and daughter, Amy Suo Wu, in Rotterdam.

Dear Ursula, There is Love and Hate was the first chapter of Serenity Department which featured one of Maria’s drawings as graphic medicine, and invited mother and daughter to talk about painful experiences about their shared past, while it created space to share emotions where spoken language had otherwise failed.

Likewise, ghostwriting or storytelling on behalf of another author, was explored by Amy as a practice of empathy and understanding. Together the combined text and imagery were published as spectral garments onto life-sized joss paper clothes designed to communicate with their ancestors, updating them about their messy attempts to reach each other and mend earthly ruptures of migration such as distance, time, language, culture and heartbreak. The traditional practice of burning joss paper sends messages to family in the afterlife and in this way, Dear Ursula, There is Love and Hate was a hopeful attempt to speak to familial ghosts that have passed down their ancestral wounding.

In Korean, ‘jogak’ means pieces and ‘bo’ means wrapping cloth. Jogakbo is a style of patchwork, traditionally used to create wrapping cloths (known as bojagi) from scraps of left-over fabrics such as cotton, silk or ramie. The scraps are sewn together using a triple-stitched seaming technique called gekki, which results in a sealed, flat seam and gives jogakbo its distinctive windowpane appearance.

Taerim Claire Jeon is an artist based in Sydney who re-interprets traditional methods and explores new forms of jogakbo.

The three selected jogakbo works were made over the past five years using various materials such as her father’s hanbok (traditional Korean clothing), remnants of silk after making hanbok ,and pieces of ramie. Hand sewing jogakbo is a meditative process for the artist for whom there are associations between sewing these pieces and patching together her past life in Korea and her present life in Australia.