Artist Statement

Inherent to my practice is working from the idea of cloth as a palimpsest that captures and collects information about its life as a personal object. Across time, people and place, cloth becomes a rich cartography of experience. Alongside extensive, critical dissemination of my studio practice, Jun’ichiro Tanazki’s essay on Japanese aesthetics, In Praise of Shadows has been poignant in articulating my fascination with wear. To borrow from Tanizaki (2001,20), it is the “grime” acquired on and within objects over years of use and handling that creates a “sheen of antiquity” that moves me so deeply. Alongside worn cloth, lace, specifically ancestral lace, is also a significant creative stimulus in my practice. My fascination with lace stems from a lace tablecloth that was transported by sea from Korčula, Croatia to Fremantle, Western Australia in 1913 by my great-great grandmother. My fixation on this object encompasses the previously mentioned ideas of wear, as well as a favouring of decoration, motif and the lace’s tangible ties to my ancestors.

 

The costumes I have produced for The Isle of The Mirage Anchorites are a series of layered garments where my intrigue with wear and lace coalesce. I have explored wear through natural dyeing, laundering and mending. Lace has been referenced through a range of screen-printed motifs developed from images of the ancestral lace artefact and from contemporary machine embroidered lace. In addition to pattern making, sampling and sewing, I have cut, stitched, over-stitched, printed, over-printed, mordanted, dyed, over-dyed, washed, pressed, mended and submerged cloth in the ocean to create garments entrenched with narrative significance.

 

Tanizaki, Jun’ichiro. 2001. In Praise of Shadows. London: Vintage.