Skip to main content

Fragments


 Some days are just your lucky days - today I was very fortunate and privileged to open the first ever Australian exhibition "Fragments" by  UK  Fibre Artist Sue Hotchkis.  Here is a little about the techniques of this amazing textile artist from her own website ... 

Working intuitively with print and stitch, marks, textures and colours are exaggerated, intensified to reveal the detail and complexity within the images. Materials are deconstructed using modern methods, ripped, burnt and dyed. Time is invested in their reconstruction; pieces can take from a week to several months to create. Whilst being aesthetically pleasing the work can also act as a metaphor for deterioration and ruin, associated with urban decay and ultimately death and loss. They evolve organically, built up with layers of print, cloth, paper, and stitch into three-dimensional abstract forms that hover between object and image; to create a unique, visual and tactile landscape of form and texture. Challenging traditional understandings of the division between the visible and the unseen.


At the opening, I didn't  really need to say much as these art works  ”speak for themselves” but that is too much of cliché. When discussing what I intended to say tonight with the Timeless Textiles Wednesday group, I asked them to give me a few words. The superlatives flowed - superb, brilliant, impressive, engaging, amazing…. But I had my own description....   
Seductive - and I don’t mean that in any raunchy way, but in that fascinating magnetic attraction which is irresistible. With Sue’s work, you are first attracted by the form, shape, texture and colour and once engaged, you are tempted to look much more closely and then to contemplate.  At this stage, you are then challenged by the dichotomy of ideas and values - the natural vs man made; old vs new, the shiny vs the decaying while experiencing the beauty in the connection.  While you embrace the appeal of the bright and the clear, you appreciate the quieter, more tentative beauty which is present in this work.  Sue Hotchkis notices and appreciates   the wabi sabi sense of the beauty in the  imperfect, the decaying and evolving.
We in Newcastle are privileged to see this wonderful body of  work, but even more privileged because through her work, Sue gives us another ‘eye’ , or rather another ‘sense’ to experience another beauty , one which we would generally dismiss or overlook.
Sue Hotchkis at "Fragments" exhibition opening at Timeless Textiles Gallery
Photo by Maggie Hall 



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Fish and Sticks : Art Dolls

This week I've been working on fish and sticks ....  The sticks are the message stick art dolls which were very popular, attracting some attention and a few orders at the Wise Women exhibition. Each of the message stick dolls are from the Wise Women series, each with her own personality and  message of wisdom, handwritten on a handmade timber tag. I gather the sticks during my walks around my neighbourhood and the tags are made from special bits of timber, some collected by me or  my husband or from off cuts gifted to us  from another doll making friend whose husband makes bagpipes. These dolls start off very simply with a wrap around a stick, in the general shape of a body. 'Naked" message stick dolls - strips of wadding wrapped around found sticks.   Then I usually wrap other layers of fabric, wool, and/or fibres, over which I do some simple embroidery. I sculpt  or mould small face masks for these dolls. I really like using "sari ribbon" as w...

Christmas Countdown 25... Christmas Tree #1

Background : It has become a bit of a Christmas tradition for me to write an Advent blog - a series of posts leading into Christmas from 1 December . In the past,  I have featured Christmas characters by the alphabet, all you ever needed to know about Christmas cakes, Christmas Firsts  and  Christmas traditions.  I usually find myself on 30 November, thinking what  to do this year?  However, I've had  the idea of "crazy " Christmas trees in the back of my mind since last year.  So this year, it's about non- traditional, unusual, crazy, weird  Christmas trees.   There will also be a "handmade" element to my posts, so there may even be some links to tutorials or other ideas....  So here we go. Christmas Countdown 25 - 1 December.  Source : https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/455285843573622091 This is the image which started this line of thought....  a yarn bombed, crochet granny square Christmas tree.  I though...

Christmas Countdown 4: Turducken

I had always thought that 'turducken' was a very modern dish  - a deboned chicken inside a deboned duck, inside a deboned turkey.  The birds are stuffed inside the gastric cavities and spaces are filled with poultry stuffing. There appear to be a few different earlier versions of this dish . I n his 1807 Almanach des Gourmands, gastronomist Grimod de La Reynière presents his rôti sans pareil ("roast without equal")—a bustard stuffed with a turkey, a goose, a pheasant, a chicken, a duck, a guinea fowl, a teal, a woodcock, a partridge, a plover, a lapwing, a quail, a thrush, a lark, an ortolan bunting and a garden warbler—although he states that, since similar roasts were produced by ancient Romans, the rôti sans pareil was not entirely novel. The final bird is very small but large enough to just hold an olive; it also suggests that, unlike modern multi-bird roasts, there was no stuffing or other packing placed in between the birds. Gooducken is a goose stuffe...