Embroidery project begun and abandoned due to my inability to find a true greyscale of threads. Hours of work have created a murky polluted area of sky that is not reminiscent of photographic documentation as intended but loaded with new meanings that creep in with the colour. Any recommendations for how to acquire true grey threads in 13+ tones would be appreciated. I am unwilling to dye my own yet.
Filed under: exhibition | Tags: artist book, censorship, dh lawrence, embroidery, etching, exhibition, feminism, library
A catalog for the exhibition Banned Books in Australia at the Baillieu Library has been released and a second edition with extra academic papers is on its way. Filled with essays by curators David Bennett, Jenny Lee and Richard Pennell on the history and status of censorship in Australia. It also contains my two works included in the show. The show is nearing it’s close and will only be open till Monday. Banned Books details.
The Lady’s Garden
Through the dichotomy of decorative and sublime responses to the landscape notions of constructed femininity as a means of control and censorship are investigated in these books. D.H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterly’s lover has been used to set the framework of the garden to uncover how certain views or vistas are deemed unsafe needing categorisation and control for safe consumption, with true nature suppressed bellow. Informed by a history of female amateur artists and the controls exerted on them, this work plays with form and style to draw together histories of art, censorship, and female repression.
Filed under: 2010, made in, book binding, printmaking | Tags: artist book, embroidery, lino cut, relief print
A foreboding Mordialloc skyline, stark windblown trees, a giant sky of clouds, hemmed in by wire, mesh, fenced barricades.
Filed under: book binding, printmaking | Tags: artist book, embroidery, lino cut, relief printing
New technology to mimic the old. Printing experiments have been a success with laser engraved and hand cut relief prints applied in layers. Today the parts will be pulled together into their final form encased in an embroidered map much darker than any other I’ve done.
The beginnings of another work, the lovely Kate (not me, another lovely Kate) returned from Vietnam with an embroidery for me. Transforming it into a book cover I am still uncomfortable with the appropriation of an unknown other’s work. As yet undecided on the contents I only know that I want to contextualise it with the book begun in Amsterdam focused on the sea, trade and colonisation.
Filed under: 2010, made in, book binding, craft, printmaking | Tags: artist book, embroidery, etching
The second copy of my embroidery and etching book The Lady’s Garden. These two books were created for the exhibition Banned Books at the Baillieu Library, details here. I’m in some good company, Eyewitness by Theo Strasser and Peter Lyssiotis is something else.
Filed under: 2010, made in, book binding, craft, printmaking | Tags: artist book, botanical, embroidery, etching, illustration
The results of backyard etching and a long day printing. This book is one of a pair to be shown as part of a group show in a few weeks. Examining definitions of femininity and how these have influenced the censoring of information for the protection of women’s delicate sensibilities. The imagerey is specifically in response to the garden imagery of DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover.
Today I have no thoughts to write just some efforts to share. All my spare time and not so spare time is consumed by my new elaborate embroidery and my studies.
I recently purchased a compendium of embroidery stitches, 260 in all. I’ve begun experimenting on this little sampler to decide on stitches and get an idea of patterns to use on some new book covers.
The past few days have been devoted to my new embroidery. Taken from an antique map design of Amsterdam it captures the central canal network that branches off the Ij encircling the city. I am quickly running out of thread which I believe is a blessing as I’ll have to put this ambitious work down.
My most complex embroidery destined for a book cover is completed. Taken from a map drawn by a dutch cartographor of the newly discovered Hollandia Nova and Dutch East Indies. Embroidered in the deep cobalts and pristine whites of delftware, a style imported and copied from China and Japan. A map of a maritime history directed by trade and discovery.
The cover and book itself will not be assembled till I’m home in Australia with access to all my materials. I’m yet to begin drawings for its interior so it’s contents are still illusive in subject and nature, water and ships will likely be involved.
Kate Hughes 