Fire, flood and Covid have characterised the last few years - it’s been a tough time. Our house on the South Coast was surrounded by fire in January 2020, devastating the bush for miles around and traumatising communities. My daughter’s house was inundated in this year’s floods that affected so many in northern NSW and southern Queensland. And the lockdowns caused by the pandemic meant that my PhD exhibition in 2021, representing four years of work, couldn’t be seen by friends and family (not even by the examiners!) The pandemic had a huge and detrimental effect on artists everywhere as exhibitions were cancelled and creative momentum came to an abrupt stop. I responded to this time with the sculptures and embroidered paintings in this exhibition. They are all made of repurposed materials, a reflection of my effort to have a sustainable practice.

Second Look: remade and reimagined textiles exhibition reflects on how handmade textiles are made, archived, used and re used by makers. Exhibitors have saved, stored and archived pieces they have made in the past and reworked them into ‘new’ artworks or have collected interesting textiles to repurpose them into ‘new’ artworks.

The life + energy captured in these pieces were originally inspired by the wonderful concept of living, or green walls - some painted in outdoor gardens. 

Surface variations are part of the process of my practice, while each painting is a creative bush interpretation.

Five artists/makers get together.

Jan Downes, Brenda Factor, Stuart Faulkner, Barbara Rogers and Catherine Rogers.

Black and white photographs (c.1933) taken by Richard A C Rogers.
Printed from the original negatives by Catherine H Rogers

Composing Earth and Sky brings together sculptural works that explore concepts inspired by natural environments and our personal connection to them.  

Concerned with humankind’s detachment from the natural world, the artists use materials that are formed in the earth and grow towards the sky to embody this dilemma.  With their hands and hearts, they work with their material’s innate qualities to co-create forms that respond to their own environment and personal stories.  These are inextricably linked to their landscape - both earth and sky.

Sally Campbell’s  Running With Stitches exhibition celebrates the art of hand-stitching. From ancient times in India, women would stitch together and patchwork cloth from rags. Kantha embroidery from Bengal became the most famous. You can see the running stitch on my handwoven quilts, cushions and scarves from Bihar, Bengal and Bhuj in Gujarat.

The negative photographs used in this exhibition were taken by an unknown group of about four men on a short visit to the Blue Mountains around 1930. It appears that they shared a camera to photograph each other posed at various tourist sites they visited on a clear sunny day in the mountains.

In a process of adding and subtracting, masking and revealing, textile artist and designer, Barbara Rogers, incorporates innovative shibori techniques with other traditional resist-dye processes in her unique artworks to create subtly varied patterns and rhythms that work in harmony with the cloth.

As our world is overwhelmed with issues arising from fast fashion / textiles industries, an individual response is to use what we have - repurposing, recycling, circulating existing materials. The idea of making do - using readily available materials for clothing and objects for warmth, protection or to beautify a home has been central to women’s domestic craft practices for centuries and has been central to Williamson’s practice for the past decade. This exhibition shows ‘new’ work created from waste, excess materials, archived designs, old clothes, or other materials.