Art Quilt Australia 09

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Craft ACT Gallery One: 7 November - 19 December 2009

Meredith Hinchliffe
freelance writer and arts advocate

Art Quilt Australia 09 is a biennial exhibition held by Ozquilt Network Inc, an Australia-wide organisation founded in 1998 to support makers of contemporary art quilts. Members come from all over the country and the exhibition was open to all Australian quiltmakers. Every alternative year, the Network organises an exhibition for members only that travels Australia.

Ozquilt members Judy Hooworth and Dianne Firth and I selected 28 quilts from 80 submitted.

Let's explore a little history of patchworking. Not that I am suggesting for a moment that the exhibits in Art Quilt Australia 09 are all pieced, although some are.

I have recently returned from a textiles study trip to Egypt. We were looking at weaving specifically, but much of the woven fabrics we saw were in garments, or fragments of garments.

I was particularly taken by a small tunic that was made up of several different pieces of fabric, stitched together. It does not conform to the definition of a quilt but is a poignant example of an early generation of women who saved and reused every fragment of fabric. It tells a story about the times and the life of the woman who made it. I am sure we have all seen pieced or patchwork quilts made more recently, but in earlier times than ours, which illustrate the concept of recycling and reusing by piecing and quilting for functional objects.

Quiltmakers today are fortunate that they have opportunities to express themselves through their use of fabrics without the cost restrictions faced by previous quilters.

Quilts, patchworked or otherwise, were never only bedcovers, they were also an artistic expression of the women who made them, even if the art was not sophisticated. Through fabrics, designs and stitching they contained memories of the lives the women had led and told stories about their makers.

In her important work on the history of craft in Australia, Grace Cochrane reminds us that work in fibre began to be taken more seriously as an area of study in the 1980s. People began to think of themselves as making a living from their work, rather than being highly skilled amateurs.¹ This period is when 'art' quilts are recognised.

Janet De Boer said in her introduction to Threads of Journeys: Australian Quilt Textiles, an exhibition curated by Jan Irvine for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade which toured the world from 1991 to 1993:

"I first knew the quilt through my grandmother's church sewing circle … Now I know the quilt textile in a hundred different forms - a tradition, a fad, a passion, one of the most useful forms of community expression, a moving reflection of our times, a stitch that joins two or more layers for purposes of construction, surface texture, decoration, depth, joining, reference to traditional uses, subtlety, or overt focusing of the viewer's attention - and much more."²

I am sure the introduction Janet describes is similar to one many other people have. People love patched or pieced quilts - as reflected in the numbers who go to EPIC to see the Canberra Quilters' exhibitions each year.

Dianne Finnegan wrote in 1995: "In 1985, Barbara Macey … was one of a small group of textile artists who held an exhibition Wool Quilts: Old and New in Melbourne. The ground-breaking show not only raised interest, it created controversy. [some] were hostile that the slapdash workmanship of some of the exhibits did not demonstrate the fine stitchery that they judged to be the most important characteristic of a good quilt."³

In this exhibition Lois Densham used old clothes, recycled fabric and offcuts. She said:

"I retain the character of the preloved clothes by leaving them whole or using minimal cutting so that the previous life is evident. … The main theme [of these works] is to tell about people. I want the viewers to see that these fabrics have been a part of their lives as well as what I have made of them."⁴

Consider the art quilt with this background in mind. People are always curious about what an 'art' quilt is. Is it a fabric version of a painting or a photograph?

No, not necessarily.

Is it a quilt that is hung, rather than being on a bed?

Again, not necessarily.

Frequently traditional methods are an important source of inspiration for art quiltmakers: the discipline of the piecing technique, the systematic planning of designs, the accurate cutting and the neat stitching.

Ozquilt organisers told potential exhibitors that: "A quilt is defined as a stitched, layered textile. The art quilts we make today originated in traditions shaped by generations of quiltmakers. We honour our predecessors by incorporating their techniques, materials and formats into fresh works that are unmistakably of our own time and place. Our quilts speak of our philosophies and of our personal journeys as artists. To achieve our ends, we also seek out novel materials, invent our own techniques, and above all express our personal thoughts, ideas, attitudes, opinions and feelings, in unique images that expand the language of quiltmaking and give our works new life and new meaning."

These are the same qualities we seek in all art forms.

Judith Duffey says that "Good design, drawing and developing critical judgment are crucial [to successful art quilts]. Much devoted craft is lavished on badly designed work. This is important for textile makers, because the medium can lend itself to repetitive and unimaginative work." Her comments apply to representational images or pictorial quilts as well as traditional patterns. Quiltmakers need to be aware of the differences in moving from one medium: drawing or painting, to another: quiltmaking. Designs on quilts need to be bold and simple.⁵

Textiles should have vigour and excitement. How closely involved are quiltmakers in emotion and intuition? Is their work exploring the possibilities of a more emotive and intuitive expression? And how is that expressed? It is important that quiltmakers keep their work in development, not to allow it to stagnate and drop into some convenient and saleable formula.

Exhibitors today are challenging and questioning our preconceptions in just the same way that artists working in other mediums do.

Many artists in this exhibition dealt with the horror and devastation of the fires in Victoria early this year, exploring the emotional impact and the aftermath of that disaster. Through the use of colours, shapes of fabric pieces and surface ornamentation we are left in no doubt about that impact. Susan Cunningham uses the graphic qualities of tyre prints created by vehicles on the raw, exposed, burnt earth after bush fire in Landmarks 4.

Artists are acutely aware of the degradation of our environment and several are exhibiting works that address this important issue. They remind us of the beauty and fragility of our landscape through the use of colour, techniques and materials.

The materials used by the majority of artists in this exhibition are traditional fabrics: cotton, silk, wool and linen. But other materials are being incorporated. Dianne Firth has used two layers of nylon net interleaved with painted viscose felt in Red Stones #1. Cotton is used for the top and bottom borders. The clever use of shadows, which changes depending on the light source, creates a gentle, three dimensional illusion. Sally Blake includes beach tumbled glass in pockets in her silk organza work Remnant.

Several artists embrace surface decoration techniques, such as dyeing, screen printing, airbrushing, block printing and painting to achieve the desired effect. Interestingly, several artists are using embroidery to embellish the surface - to highlight particular areas or to enhance the quilting technique. Margaret Ruane's Green and Mist after the Arsonists captures the new growth in the landscape after the fires using lustrous embroidery threads and hand stitching offering hope, despite the devastation.

We also see humour, the use of technology to investigate illusions and some wonderful use of colour whether it is subtle or bright. In the only quilt in the exhibition that depicts the human figure, Ruth de Vos uses colour and humour in What Does Your Family Look Like? Seemingly using children's drawings, this work is a delightful take on the way children learn to draw themselves and their families.

Barbara Macey continues her exploration of optical illusion, which was the subject of her earliest works in the early 1980s. She recently discovered a simple computer program that facilitates extensive investigation into the ways that these illusions work. She states that Grey Cloud is based on earlier 'circle' motifs and recent experiments with colour.

The works in Art Quilt Australia 09 embody the qualities that were set out by the organisers of this exhibition. Handquilting no longer reigns supreme, machine quilted works are not condemned and fine stitchery is not the most important characteristic of a good quilt.

One thing we can be sure of is that art quilts are far more than a reflection on the limited conventions within which cosy bed covers are located.

Footnotes

1. Grace Cochrane, The Crafts Movement in Australia: a history, NSW University Press, Sydney, 1992
2. Janet De Boer, Threads of Journeys: Australian Quilt Textiles, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 1991
3. Dianne Finnegan, Showing the Colours: Past, Present and Future, Colours of Australia: Directions in Quiltmaking, The Quilters' Guild, J B Fairfax Publication, 1995, p 7.
4. Lois Densham, Artist's Statement, Wool Quilts: Old and New, Australian Wool Corporation, 1985, p 7
5. Judith Duffey, Enthusiastic Ornament, Quilters' Review, No. 15, Summer, 1993, p8

Images

• Sally Blake, Remnant (detail), silk organza, beach tumbled glass, machine quilting, 1150 x 395mm
• Susan Cunningham, Landmarks 4 (detail), light weight cottons, silk organza overlay, manipulated digital images printed onto cotton cloth, machine quilting, hand quilting, original digital images courtesy of John Kennedy, 1090 x 520mm
• Ailsa Koloi, Victoria, 100% cotton background, polyester dress, lace, piecing, free machined lace, beading, 670 x 500mm
• Ruth de Vos, What Does Your Family Look Like? (detail), cotton fabric hand dyed by the artist, cotton wadding, machine piecing, machine quilting, 980 x 1320mm
• Margaret Ruane, Green and Mist after the Arsonists, 100% wool (old cream blanket), rayon, cotton, fabric paint, hand dyed with plant material, hand printed, hand stitched, machine pieced, 375 x 960mm

Photos: Creative Image Photography.