For those, like me, who love to know a little something about the artistic process and stories behind the work you encounter in gallery spaces.
Blanket silence was made in 2015. A community of local artists was turning the old Onkaparinga Mill into a gallery space. I had been gifted pieces of blanket made at the mill to use as material in artworks for an upcoming exhibition on site. Bits of blanket had arrived in the post (I love the post!). I was letting my imagination play with the colours and textures of these treasured fibres, the poetry, symbology, the possibilities. Just having finished fashioning another work, a hand-stitched hot seat, I was nursing sore hands when the news hit …
process notes
I read the news
and likely re-read the news
I read the legislation
tried to comprehend
my cogs turned
my heart turned
words started forming
notes appeared
from me
on social media
notes on the process of feeling
the legislation
land
in my human system
…and then crafting a response
notes
on making the wearable document that is blanket silence:
23 Jun 2015
Head in a blanket, feeling out a response.
1 Jul 2015
Silence, as mandatory as detention.
13 Jul 2015
having to hold back tears
so as to keep making art
with this pointed needle
14 Jul 2015
I was cosy to the eyeballs poeting with blankets when Australia’s new Border Force Act passed. Yep that one making the REPORTING of abuses suffered by those in detention (including but not limited to sexual abuse of children) a punishable offence.
Feeling useless and ashamed and cut and unravelled and responsible and offended and powerless and without words … I did the only thing I could; pushed the tears back in, pulled out my writing needle and lovingly hand-stitched a document that could be worn when speaking was shut down.
Bird-face responded by trying to rip it from my face. Maybe silence makes him sic too.
‘blanket silence’ #silencemakesmesic mask
unavoidably influenced by the secrecy provision in the Border Force Act
will be on exhibit at Woven@The Mill during SALA Festival
the Border Force Act is on exhibit here: http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/…/display.w3p;query=Id%3A…
artwork
First in my ‘silence makes me sic’ series, blanket silence has been exhibited at:
- hART (now Fabrik) in the Onkaparinga Woolen Mill (where the blanket used in the artwork was made)
- Pepper Street Arts Centre
- and online in solo exhibition The Poetry of Object 0.2
where you can find more information … about the artwork … the legislation … and the greater response
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