A multimedia installation by Tracy Sorensen, Karen Golland, Michelle Stockwell
Bathurst Regional Art Gallery Feb 1 - March 30, 2008
The exhibition is a multi-media exploration of crafts practiced in Australian homes in the 1970s, some now forgotten, some reviled and some being revived. These crafts include crochet, macrame, copper art and the use of Hobbytex fabric paints. The exhibition includes video installation work by Tracy Sorensen, visual art objects by Karen Golland and a soundscape by Michelle Stockwell. The exhibition explores the tension between the ephemeral and banal nature of the objects created and the weight of nostalgia and loss now evoked by them. It celebrates a world of creativity and absorption practiced by millions of (mainly) women and children in the home, a world well beneath the surface of the dominant narrative of the '70s. It also explores tensions between art and craft by exploring what happens when people people follow craft instructions - the Hobbytex paint-by-numbers projects, for example. Are the results art? For Vivienne Binns, veteran of the women's art movement of the 1970s, it is art, because it's part of the continuum of human creativity in which we are immersed. Inspired by this, the exhibition draws parallels between the processes of “high” and “low” arts, especially in works requiring a lot of repetition or great fiddliness. It also explores the complicated feelings evoked by domestic crafts: nostalgia, security, a particular form of misogyny (we call it crochet-horror), rejection and longing are but a few.
Accumulation of Hobbytex, after Armand. Tracy Sorensen, 2008
This exhibition showcases entirely new work from all three artists. It includes new works by printmaker and artist Karen Golland, three video installations by Tracy Sorensen, a curated exhibition of original retrieved craft objects (including two macrame owls) and an immersive soundscape by Michelle Stockwell.
See a gallery of images from the exhibition. (This gallery requires Flash Player and may take a moment to download.)
Listen to Michelle Stockwell's immersive soundscape created for the exhibition.
LINKS
http://americanhistory.si.edu/paint/picturePlace.html (The Smithsonian Institute's exploration of Paint By Numbers.)
www.hobbytex.com.au (The official Hobbytex site.)
http://lostartsofthe1970s.blogspot.com (Blog relating to the exhibition.)
http://lostarts.wikispaces.com/ (Inventory of objects collected for the exhibition.)
http://www.pbase.com/dunnart/lost_arts_of_the_1970s (Photos of the exhibition launch on February 1, 2008.)