Let the Sunshine In
2 Feb 2024 – 24 Jan 2024
Featuring artists:
Hannah Cooper (NSW), Lucia Dormann (SA), Jilly Edwards (UK), Amanda Ho (VIC), Kay Lawrence (SA), Sara Lindsay (VIC), Misako Nakahira (Japan), Robyn Phelan (VIC), Jacqueline Stojanovic (VIC), Cheryl Thornton (VIC)
Curated by Sara Lindsay, she asks:
why this group of artists have serendipitously and independently chosen to work with yellow at this moment in time?
Let the Sunshine In represents 10 multi-generational female visual artists, from Australia, the UK and Japan, who make hand woven textiles. The exhibition focuses on the formal qualities of the colour yellow, whether determined by dyes or materials used, a response to the natural environment, or a conscious desire to convey a particular emotion.
The 100th Anniversary of the Bauhaus was celebrated in 2019. For many years there has been ongoing discussion about the way in which women were denied entry to the painting department and sent to the weaving studio. However, there is now increasing acknowledgement of just how important a role women played through their work in the weaving departments in Germany and later at Black Mountain College in the USA.
This exhibition celebrates hand weaving as a significant and highly relevant art form within the visual arts today…...it has been 'let in'!
Marguerite Wildenhaim at the Wheel. Photo taken by Otto Hagel.
Permission with thank to the Stewards of the Coast and Redwoods.
Statement for Gestures for Marguerite
Gestures for Marguerite is a tribute to Bauhaus trained potter Marguerite Wildenhain (1896–1985). A fiercely independent educator, she established Pond Farm in California where she taught for thirty years. I imagine these summers through a golden yellow lens, seeing denim clad students as they gather to absorb her demanding instruction.
The materials of clay and denim reference historic images of the Pond Farm studio but steps aside from making utilitarian pottery. I am concerned with how materials are affected by an embodied making process. My marks of making remain evident across the ceramic surface and in the labour required to reclaim well-loved but worn-out family clothing.
