String Along shows the work of artists Helen Amanatiadis, Cathy Ball, Tricia Flanagan, Jody Graham. Judy Ann Moule, Christine Wiltshier and Marcelo Zavala-Baeza.
“Perhaps the key to the ontology of making is to be found in
a length of twine.”(1)
The works in String Along are diverse
and varied in form. But together they explore ‘line’ from its expression in the act of drawing, to knitting, weaving and to the
filament extruded in 3D printing. The process of making is also
brought to the foreground in many of the exhibited works, as ‘lines’ create
material traces that evidence their relationship with the body of the
maker.
Image: Details of work by Jody Graham, Marcelo Zavala-Baeza, Helen Amanatiadis, Judy Ann Moule, Cathy Ball, Tricia Flanagan, Christine Wiltshier |
24th August
6-7pm - Performance
of the collaborative work Uncompleted
Gestures Weigh Heavily… artists Judy Ann Moule and Christine Wiltshier
25th and 26th August 12-2pm - Continuation of collaborative
performance work Uncompleted Gestures
Weigh Heavily… artists Judy Ann Moule and Christine Wiltshier
25th August 2 -5pm - It All Adds Up –
Community collaborative rug - work in progress made from salvaged bits of
string, rope, shoe laces, cord and fabric discarded on streets, in alleyways,
parks, train stations and similar places with Jody Graham. All salvaged string contributions welcome.
31st August
1st and 2nd September 2-4pm
Continuation of collaborative performance work Uncompleted Gestures Weigh Heavily…
artists Judy Ann Moule and Christine Wiltshier
9th September 2- 5pm It All Adds Up – Continuation of community
collaborative rug - work in progress made from salvaged bits of string, rope,
shoe laces, cord and fabric discarded on streets, in alleyways, parks, train
stations and similar places with Jody Graham. All salvaged string contributions welcome.
The ancient technique of making string is one of humanity's
earliest innovations that led to the evolution of culture from fishing nets in
agriculture to weaving looms in industry, which were the forerunners of the
computers of today. Helen Amanatiadis’ works, A Measure of Strings and Probability of Miracles, explore the tensions between the
inherently ancient practice of making and working with string and the rise of
industrialisation and rationalism. Her works quote architectural building
structures, braces or jigs, and are created from industrial strings of
synthetic twine and rope, which are crocheted and woven into bands that cut
into and across the gallery space. Amanatiadis’ works bring to the fore
emergent activities such as making from string, which have been repressed
through modernity and industrialisation.
Jody Graham’s works Missed
Diagnosis, Urban Bowers and It
All Adds Up address the accumulating detritus of the industrial world.
Inspired by the use of found materials and the make do ethos that lay behind
the creation of the ‘wagga rug’, which was thought to be created by Australian
itinerant agricultural workers, from used wheat or jute flour bags and twine,
during the late 1800s and early 1900s (2). Graham has collected and repurposed
found string like materials into a life size cocoon and a series of nests that
investigate metamorphosis and transformation. It All Adds Up is a collaborative work in progress, performed
throughout the duration of the exhibition, which involves a rug being created
from salvaged bits of string, rope, shoe laces, cord and fabric discarded on
streets, in alleyways, parks and similar public places.
The evolution of the tools we make with informs the evolution of
the way we think and the work of Marcelo Zavala-Baeza has developed through a
micro interference with the
processes of current technology. In Where
is Gary? a series of miniature figurines appear to capture a moment of
movement, an explosion of line that append the figurines bodies, a free
expression of extruded filament from the otherwise controlled 3Dprinted
description of the body – each have a unique character, expressed through
aesthetics of the digital that he creates through a process that enhances
chance encounters and happenings –and terms ‘serendipity”.
From micro to macro gestures, the collaborative performance
work of conceptual artists Judy Ann Moule and Christine Wiltshier, Uncompleted Gestures Weigh Heavily…moves
the notion of string towards thread and yarn. Using constructed and recycled
materials (red thread and hair stuffed tubing) and suspended knitting
tools Moule and Wiltshier consider notions of subjective and constructed
identity, teasing out what is visible and what might be hidden, and, what might
be shared, by each unique individual. As the props become activated, and the
pair crosses over and attempt to interpret fading knitting instructions, the
process of knitting becomes a gestural dance where the artists’ bodies and
the process of knitting are integrated, suggesting knitting as part of
identity.
The works of Cathy Ball and Tricia Flanagan also involve the
reimagining of intimate artist experiences, through a combination of string as
thread, yarn, technology and weaving. Ball’s work, Day 10 involves a transformative process
described in red thread, which accounts for the time involved in treatment and
recovery during illness. The meditative nature of the weaving process was used
therapeutically during this time to create this series of small panels.
Yarn, weaving and intimate experience are combined with
technology in Tricia Flanagan’s’ work BODYecology;
in this case the time counted in her work is that of sleep. A video reveals a
performance installation and is displayed in the exhibition along with a
blanket. The blanket has been produced during the performance. The video shows
the artist sleeping in a gallery beside a portable dying machine which records
her sleep pattern in indigo along a hand spun thread. When Flanagan awakes she
weaves the resulting variegated blue and white thread into a blanket,
whose varying stripes document in cloth, a night’s sleep, this process was
repeated for 1 month.
1. Ingold, Tim. The
Textility of making, Cambridge Journal of Economics 2010, 34, p.91-102
2.
https://www.nationalquiltregister.org.au/wagga-rugs/