>>PREVIEW
FINDING THE INVISIBLE
Runs until May 12
Barb Hunt, Sarah Maloney and Janice Wright Cheney
Stride Gallery
Geographically speaking, the works in Finding the Invisible at Stride Gallery couldn't be further apart. This group exhibition of works by Sarah Maloney and Janice Wright Cheney combines the traditionally intimate domestic pastime of sewing with Barb Hunt's large international map that stretches across Stride's entire north wall.
Barb Hunt's "the old lie" is an installation of a world map, traced out using scraps of camouflage army fatigues. The thinly cut uniforms are used to line the borders of each country, with their buttons, zippers and seams as the connecting material between territories.
Maps make a representation of the world on a scale that can fit in our hands or on our walls and make these vast geographies understandable. Looking down from an airplane, most topographies also approximate the colours of camouflage. The rivers, lakes and road systems remind one of Hunt's uniform scraps snaking around each country's borders. "the old lie" links the mapping and understanding of conflict, genocide, war and politics with the bodies or the soldiers who enforce, defend and protect boundaries. Here, when the tattered clothing of soldiers is used to carefully trace the political map of the world, it presents a view of international boundaries as they're drawn by armed conflict, international aid and peacekeeping missions.
Hunt describes herself as pacifist, and her other works have included knitted landmines displayed with information about the International Ban Mine Treaty, and collections of delicate fabric flowers placed on graves each season. The work captures her fascination with camouflage as a pattern that is designed to protect and conceal the individual's body.
Works by Sarah Maloney and Janice Wright Cheney establish a domestic space: they both include furniture as a method of display or as a found object and reference the domestic work of sewing and textile works by women. Hunt's wall installation speaks to a different kind of space, or perhaps it can be read as a large map on the wall of a lavish old house that the other works convincingly suggest.
In Sarah Maloney's "Botanical Study," two chairs are upholstered with ornately patterned fabric, while little intrusions that reference internal body-workings poke through the two-dimensional fabric wrappings. One chair hosts a buoyant pair of bronze lungs sprouting from its backing, making it impossible to sit on without crushing them, while the pattern on the other chair is gently infested by embroidered ovaries that hide in amongst the colourful curlicues of the fabric. One can imagine a delicate Victorian dame perched upon the lush chair, quietly embroidering as her organs are being squished by a corset, fading into the silently creeping patterns of the decor.
Janice Wright Cheney's tiny batik embroideries in Petri dishes are a collection that mimics a botanical collection as it might be displayed in a drawing room or study. Her Labouratoire of specimens is neatly arranged on two finely wrought antique tables and set against a wall of deep blue. The dark-hued gallery wall also reminds one of a home, as we navigate Wright Cheney's objects on an intimate bodily scale. The tiny lines of embroidered thread, little rosettes and stitches mimic drawings of single celled organisms, or creepy amoeba-like creatures under a magnifying glass.
The pairing of this work with Wright Cheney's video projection in Stride's project room creates a slight rupture in the show. The darkened project space is like a cavernous underground viewing platform to stand on while peering at illuminated sealife; the projection like looking into the window of an aquarium. Inside, jellyfish float through the sea with their gills billowing. The video projection shines through sheer fabric hanging against the back wall, while the initial curiosity for the specimen on display is dampened by the addition of waves of rarified symphonic music that also reverberate in the space, forcing a poetic reading rather than a scientific one. The connection between this projection and the show upstairs is tenuous, unless this creepy underwater creature could be imagined as one of the specimens on Wright Cheney's table of single-celled curiosities.
Together, the works in the show are a pattern-clash, combined like a quilt stitched up from mix-and-match bits of recycled gingham shirts, floral or printed fabric from worn-out pillowcases or the off-cuts bin at a sewing store. Like the various patches on a homemade quilt, the works of each artist don't necessarily look like they go together, but Finding the Invisible isn't exactly a home-decor project either. There's a productive visual discussion here among these artists within the hidden meanings of pattern, mimicry and camouflage. |
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