Iteration 13 TENT
4 -7 Nov 2021
https://tent.art
TENT is a new Art Weekend taking place throughout Aotearoa and online, presented by the team who deliver the Auckland Art Fair. The inaugural edition of TENT will feature live exhibitions across the country and also online, and will take place from Thursday 4 – Sunday 7 November across New Zealand.
For the inaugural edition of TENT, mothermother presents; FINGER PRICKS & CURSES.
Arthritic hands, clearing out the stash, boredom, changes in fashion, lack of time, death, or an inability to concentrate; all could be reasons for abandoned stitch works. These histories may never be revealed.
In early 19th Century Britain, embroidery was regarded as frivolous and quite unhealthy, as it requires many hours of sitting down and inner focus. We invite mothermother artists to pick up these discarded works, collaborate with an unknown crafter, and engage in excessive making and concentration, synthesising layered histories, one stitch at a time.
Works featured in mothermother's TENT presentation will be available for contactless viewing, by appointment between the hours of 12-3pm on Saturday 6 Nov, and Sunday 7 Nov at mothermother 23 Minnie Street Eden Terrace.
ARTISTS
Rose Meyer, Kiriana O’Connell, Kelly Pretty, Judy Darragh, Joyce Campbell, Nat Tozer, Robyn Walton, Inga Fillary, Jessica Douglas, Michelle Mayn, Teresa Peters, Ekaterina Dimieva, Hye Rim Lee, Yukari Kaihori and Sandra Bushby.
Kelly Pretty, 'Swallow', Found Textiles, Bag not including strings: 540 x 580 mm. Internal artwork: 430 x 280 mm, 2021. "I offered Hiero $20 to count the stitches. I still don’t know how many there are."
Kiriana O'Connell, 'Pae Kare', Found Textiles, 500 x 655 mm, 2021. "Kua takoto te mānuka. He mihi aroha ki ngā morehu katoa o te kaikiri tangata me te mamae o te kaupapa nei. Ka nunui te mihi hoki ki ngā wahine o te roopū Taraheke, nā koutou ahau i tū kaha. The challenge was picked up and unpicked so many times over the last six weeks. How to encompass the depth and breadth of racism with so few stitches? I couldn’t."
Robyn Walton, 'Paws', Found object and textiles, 420 x 300 mm, 2021. "Fossicking for second-hand treasures allows for a purely sensory response, circumventing those aggravatingly presumptuous algorithms. I have always appreciated how found objects open the way to a collaboration with an object’s former existence. Pricks & Curses has also enabled a collaboration with my fellow Mothers - I have been making in lockdown with the company of an entire community."
Natalie Tozer, Finger Pricks & Curses', Needles on Overdyed cotton canvas, 440 x 430mm, 2021. "In the end there was just the one prick."
Judy Darragh 'Twirl', Found Textiles, 800 x 300mm, 2021. "This has been a lockdown task with various waves of inspiration. I had in mind what to do then added what I had in the studio, actual stitching is minimal, cheated with glue.....probably a reflection of lockdown malaise...sigh ! (Represented by Two Rooms)
Ekaterina Dimieva, 'Flower Power', acrylic paint and embroidery on canvas, 255 x 205mm, 2021 "This abandoned stitch work drew my attention immediately with its exquisite, cascading collection of floral shapes and leaves. They form patterns that grow and flourish, then fall apart, only to reassemble again. The whole composition is quite musical – if you squint, you see music notes, instead of flowers.."
Hye Rim Lee, 'Pink Mushrooms', Embroidery stretched onto wooden frame, 255 x 255 mm, 2021. "She sits and makes pink roses with her thread And wonders what to do, her heart astir, What road to take, where roads branch close ahead, And how to know her true love calling her; Whether to follow thorny paths (but sweet The young wild heart's way!) or to fling the door Wide to love's placid tread with wonted feet, And how to build her life forevermore." (Embroidery, poem by Margaret Widdemer)
Yukari Kaihori, 'Dyed fabric with thread', Found textiles, 750mm x 350mm, 2021. "Alder cones have been used for dyeing and to conserve paper since the 8th century in Japan called Yashabushi dye. For this project, I dyed fabric using the Ohaguro dye technique that uses iron (rusted nails) as a mordant for the alder cones dye ( Yashabushi). Ohaguro was a cosmetic practice of teeth blackening popular in the past and most recently until early 20th century among female widows. Blackened teeth were then considered aesthetically pleasing. I used the fabric and thread I found at The West Auckland Resource Centre. The rusted screws used for installations are used to make the iron solution for the dye process."
Sandra Busby, 'Many edges and openings', Found Textiles, 600 x 350mm, 2021. "I have rearranged this work so many times and explored many edges and openings." (Represented by Sumer Gallery)
Joyce Campbell and Kuini, 'untitled', Embroidery on raw edged cotton, 2021. "I finished it with my daughter"
Rose Myer, 'Beneath the stains of time the needle tears a hole', Embroidery on unfinished tablecloth, 1090 x 1060mm, 2021. "You never finished your project and time crept in, leaving marks you had not intended, I too left accidental accents; blossoms of crimson against the white of our work."
Jessica Douglas, 'Hide and Seek', Acrylic on sample curtain fabric pieces, 450 x 350mm, 2021. "My painting support was sewn together from three pieces of yellow, orange and purple fabric offcuts. The resulting work grew from multiple decisions built upon the nature and colours of this support; which first led me to incorporate painted vertical divisions across the surface to integrate the panels; then applying most aspects of my existing painting process, to produce a work that is familiar yet utterly distinct."
Inga Fillary, 'STOOGE', Found textiles, acrylic, agar, mould, bacteria, nails, binder in wooden frame behind glass, 510 x 410 mm, 2021. "The brief was to finish these incomplete works. What would that look like without human intervention? To explore this natural end result I decided to make 2 giant petri dishes and expedite nature’s course. Mould consumes and vitalises the nutrients to make space for new life, thus intertwining life with death, pure with diseased. The highly experimental works have been a pleasure and a challenge to create under lockdown conditions."
Inga Fillary, 'SUSPENDED ANIMATION', Found textiles, acrylic, agar, mould, bacteria, paraffin wax, in wooden frame, 1500 x 430 mm, 2021. "The brief was to finish these incomplete works. What would that look like without human intervention? To explore this natural end result I decided to make 2 giant petri dishes and expedite nature’s course. Mould consumes and vitalises the nutrients to make space for new life, thus intertwining life with death, pure with diseased. The highly experimental works have been a pleasure and a challenge to create under lockdown conditions."
Teresa Peters, 'Echoes of entanglements, Found Textiles, 600 x 1000mm, 2021. "Echoes, entanglements and godmother tails... seeds from the resource centre, though locked in my studio during lockdown, were an unravelling red knitting patch and a natural history cross stitch of a bird of paradise."
Michelle Mayn, 'Entanglement', Cotton thread, rayon thread (circa 1938), muka (harakeke/NZ flax fibre), natural dye (indigo, tanekaha), pins, driftwood, book, size variable on installation, 2021. "Entangled, untangled, knotted, looped bound, wound, strung, hooked... do not DESTROY...the memory of thread"