Stitched Up

My artwork Stitched Up on the front of the Paper: All Stitched Up catalogue

What is it about stitching that makes it so seductive? Certainly as a child I never would have considered it as a technique worth pursuing. It was an application of willpower to learn how to thread a needle, stitch a straight line and then continue until the stitching project was finished.

One of my earliest memories was stitching a felt needle case. When I progressed to making a garment on the sewing machine, hand stitching was reserved for tacking. How I resisted this extra step. I wanted to rush through the process so I could get to the end.

Taking stitching out of the realm of garment making and into the realm of art was a revelation to me. I started with zigzag machine stitching papers as small collages. Later, when I needed to collage two pieces of thin banana paper together, I realised that I would need to switch to hand stitching. That was where tacking stitch came into its own. I love the straight lines it makes, the sense of direction, of walking a line with a needle and thread.

For a long time I have wanted to explore how I could use my collection of sewing and knitting patterns inherited from my mother, grandmother and great aunts. I needed to tell their story, one curtailed by the gender restrictions of the time. They did not have the freedom of self expression that I enjoy. Theirs was defined by the utilitarian functionality of home decor items; making cushions, embroidered fireguards and tablecloths.

Stitched Up was the result; a collage of memories of my grandmother’s blue laundry whitener, my mother’s knitting patterns, the stacks of embroidered doilies created by my great aunt, my own threads hanging loose and tangled. These were all backed onto handmade paper made from the pulped up hessian sandbags used to protect our house during the 2022 floods.

I was delighted to see that my artwork was selected as the cover image for the Papermakers and Artists Queensland Inc catalogue for the Paper: All Stitched Up exhibition at Gympie Regional Gallery, QLD.

I like to think that through my art, I am honouring that matrilineal legacy, showing their resilience and strength despite the restrictions placed on them during their own lives. Now stitching creates an opportunity to walk their stories across paper; sometimes running, sometimes pausing as the threads of the past and pulled into the present and future.

I have two other artworks in this exhibition, both were influenced by the fires and floods which have been cycling through the years in increasing frequency. These two works were both started at my artist residency at BigCi in the Blue Mountains in 2020 responding to the bushfires and continued as my residency resumed in 2021 when there were floods in the nearby town of Richmond. It took another year to resolve these artworks to include the floods of 2022.

Stitching these collaged works together ‘joined the dots’ of climate change, resilience and adaption. My stories merge with those of my matrilineal ancestors to tell stories of this time I live in.

Forest Talk (left) and Of Fires and Flooding Rains (right) included in the Paper: All Stitched Up exhibition at Gympie Regional Gallery February-March 2024.