Skip to main content

Meditations on Mercator


‘The Timelessness of Stitch’ was an invitational group exhibition at Timeless Textiles Gallery, Newcastle NSW , 1 April  – 10 May 2026   ….  Across generations and cultures, the act of stitching has woven together stories, traditions and identities. Each thread carries not only aesthetic value but also the memories and emotions of those who crafted it, demonstrating how this simple act transcends time and place.

I was honoured and humbled to be amongst the twenty-three artists (national and international) participating in this exhibition.

My small installation took some time to develop…. Although I knew about this exhibition for some time, I kept procrastinating, going from one idea to another and not settling on any.

Recently, I came across the word “mercator” and while a vague notion of maps was recalled, I really needed to research. Besides the modern commercial connections, Mercator has its origins in cartography, which Is often a source of inspiration for my artworks.

The term Mercator most commonly refers to Gerardus Mercator, the 16th-century Flemish cartographer who revolutionised navigation with his world map projection.  

  • Mercator Projection: Created in 1569, this cylindrical map projection allows sailors to plot a course as a straight line (rhumb line), making sea travel much easier.
  • Size Distortion: While excellent for navigation, the projection famously distorts the size of landmasses far from the equator. For example, Greenland appears nearly as large as Africa, when Africa is actually about 14 times larger.
  • Web Mercator: Modern digital maps like Google Maps and OpenStreetMap use a variant called "Web Mercator" for their street-level displays ( Wikipedia)



While the maps of the time were fascinating subjects; I simply had run out of time to stitch a map …. So I began to think about stitching islands onto a background fabric…. I even bought a circular board which was going to represent a world map projection. This was until, a conversation with the curator about this idea, and a suggestion and ideas flowed with the creation of stitched landforms, to be mounted directly on to the gallery wall in a random fashion.

I chose a colour palette inspired by  “Farmer’s Market” , hand dyed thread by Cottage Garden threads and from then, it was serious stitching until nine “meditations” took shape.

Meditations on Mercator: As I stitched these small meditations, my mind wandered into unknown territories where ancient maps took shape as if lands had been there since the beginning of time, but had eluded human definition.  These stitcheries ae imagined “terra incognito”.


More information about Mercator: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerardus_Mercator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection

Embroidery Threads :  https://www.cottagegardenthreads.com.au/



 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for reading my blog and please share your thoughts about my blog post by leaving a comment.Your comment won't appear immediately as comments are verified before publication in an effort to reduce the amount of spam appearing. Anonymous comments will not be published.

Popular posts from this blog

#SeptTextileLove26 Day 7

  #SeptTextileLove #STL26Day7 ‘Historical’ ... Family history is often a source of inspiration and information for my work. This stitched work featuring a photo of my great grandmother also acts as a commentary on the Chinese historical practice of foot binding, hence the inclusion of an x ray photograph of a female bound foot. It looks painful and undoubtedly was , but it was considered 'beautiful". What contemporary body shaping practices do we still engage in for the sake of ‘beauty’? Historical body shaping practices included tight-lacing corsets, foot binding, and neck elongation , all used to mould the human form into culturally defined ideals of beauty. (AI overview) Foot Binding in China Starting from Song elites and eventually popularized and ended in the Qing dynasty, foot binding was seen as an idolized representation of women's petite beauty, and the practice was referred to as "三寸金莲" , 'three-inch golden lotus' Wikipedia . This practice...
Post a Comment
Read more

#SeptTextileLove26 Day8

    SeptTextileLove #stl26day8 ‘Inspiring Exhibition’ … earlier this year , the Wednesday Makers Group at Timeless Textiles ( Newcastle, Australia) celebrated International Women’s Day with their exhibition, “Inspiring Women in Stitch’ - congratulations - inspiring women honouring inspiring women .   link to video   
Post a Comment
Read more

#SeptTextileLove26 Day 4

 #septtextilelove  #stl26day4  … Story-telling … making ‘art dolls’ gives wonderful opportunities to tell stories … This matriarch’s story  is intertwined with the cicadas which form  part of the soft sculpture  and emphasises what appears to be a contradiction about nurturing life and inevitable death... Cicadas spend years underground as nymphs feeding on root sap, emerging en masse as winged adults for a few days, perhaps a week, to mate and lay eggs in tree branches, then die, leaving the eggs to hatch into new nymphs that burrow underground to restart the cycle.  The dormant underground phase of the cicada’s life can be from 2-17 years! In my interpretation, this forest matriarch offers a safe place for cicadas to lay eggs, only to cause their own demise … but the continuing life cycle is ensured. 
Post a Comment
Read more