ARTIST TALK | ISLAND WELCOME + N'ZASSA: MAKING THINGS WORK

Craft + Design Canberra warmly invites you to join us for two wonderful artist talks on Saturday 9 September 2023.

Entry is free, register your attendance here.

12pm - 1pm

Artist and Curator | Peter T. McCarthy

Peter McCarthy seeks to inspire positive social transformation by subverting familiar traditional forms related to identify, power and prestige re-imaging them through his own personal material symbolism. Using zippers as a metaphor for humility. Normally zippers are functional elements of clothing. They are ironically brightly coloured, usually, in order to discretely do their job almost invisibly.

N’zassa, like all patchwork traditions, is borne of necessity, seeking to make the best of what is available. Each piece brings what is has to the overall composition. Each piece is important. The flags in the Anthems series reference emblematic traditional textile structures and motifs from various ethnic groups. Peter wants each viewer to feel a strange familiarity looking at his work, whilst simultaneously looking at something entirely new.

1.30pm - 2pm VIA ZOOM

Curator | Belinda Newick

Island Welcome is a nationally touring group exhibition exploring the use of contemporary jewellery as a gesture of welcome. Curated by Belinda Newick, the exhibition seeks to bring attention to asylum seeker issues and to extend the dialogue beyond art and craft audiences via expressions of Australian values through craft practice.

With reference to welcome garlands gifted in many traditional islander cultures, each artist has made a neckpiece, lei, or garland interpreting the theme of welcome whilst considering current Australian immigration policies. The artists use the narrative and material potential of each distinct garland to encapsulate a complex visual language and to express the emotions felt by the maker during the process.