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/

Lilly Pilly

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Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

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