Monday 11 December 2017

Material Memories Exhibition - Visiting the Collection

The Invitation


Delighted to have been invited to participate in this exhibition curated by Sarah Stubbs.

The project entitled Material Memories is about connecting six contemporary artists with small object collections bequeathed by Tasmanians to the Queen Victorian Museum and Art Gallery.

The parameters of the project are to open a discussion and explore methods of materiality, through the mapping of existing objects in order to reveal the story of place and visual memory.

Through material inventions, we seek to construct new memories, fictions and poetic narratives that speak of our conceptual construction of place. 

We seek to use the act of making as a legitimate means to ask: How can an object define or translate our sensory perception and physical experiences of space and place?

The Artists 
Janine Coombs, Penelope Davis, Eli Giannini, Sue Buchanan, Sarah Stubbs and Myself.


TMAG - Mining the Museum

In late November 2017, we were given access to TMAG's natural, cultural and artistic collections and guided through by amazingly generous staff. 


My initial plan was to look at the scrimshaw as TMAG has a world class collection. The qualities of the scratching into the white bone was compelling and complimentary to sgrafitto on porcelain clay. This might be a process in which to depict a narrative that evolves.
It was quite humbling to handle these objects of great longing was what is no longer or is far away. Much of the imagery inscribed was of women & courtship in a most intimate but well-mannered presentation. Designs by more naive hands were of simple beauty, the joy of creating something decorative such as vase of flowers. 
  
 
 


Aboriginal woven baskets and string bags have been on interest since my ceramics studies at RMIT. This bag is particularly fine. Melbourne Museum has an incredible collection of bags.

 
 This selection blew our craftswomen's minds. The intricacy of technique, the fineness of material and  clearly apparent love and respect in the making.


 
 The Proclamation Cup is a disturbing in it's banality the maker Violet Mace created this work in 1935, whose narrative decoration is based Governor Arthur's Proclamation board which was painted in 1829.  It is a complex history and oblique in its intent.



  

The remainder of these images are of weird wonderful and indicative things of Launceston, Tasmania and museums collecting in general.









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