Mar
29
Oh Sorry, was that your land?
At long last I can present a work I finished a while ago which has been sitting in the framing pile for far too long.
For a long time I have been astounded at the amount of finished handmade work that lies unwanted and unappreciated in our op shops. Mostly they are insanely undervalued. I recently visited a store that had a tapestry frame for sale (at higher price than brand new ones!) sitting alongside a finished tapestry. Take a guess at which had the higher price. Given that the people that normally work in op shops – especially of the charity variety – tend to be older women, you’d think there’d be a bit more appreciation for the time and effort gone into some of these pieces. But sadly not.
As part of my personal goal of using less new stuff, rather, using the stuff we have more efficiently. And as part of my goal to help raise the value of craft, in particular the not practically useful ones.. I have begun a series of stitch ‘hacks’.
Taking the political ideas behind hacktivism and the open source movement in particular to inform this series, the Tapysteria Hacks will take a previously discarded piece and give it a new, albeit political, life.
The piece above was titled ‘Snowgum’ and it’s a scene from Goulburn. I’d just been through that area when I found this one so I was particularly interested in it. Initially I had some more detailed ideas for it, but decided that I didn’t want to take away too much from the original work. I found this rolled up and stuffed under a pile of fabric in an op shop. I think it was about $3 or $4. The original work wasn’t done on a frame so it was quite stretched and distorted and took quite a lot of work to frame up – massive respect to Finer Art Services, the art framers in Seddon for the awesome work done on this, Heart! Heart!
This piece is for sale to raise funds for Lex Wotton’s support fund.
On Friday 24th October an all white jury found Lex Wotton, an Aboriginal man from Palm Island, Australia – a former prison island for Aboriginal People – guilty of ‘rioting with destruction’ for his involvement in the 2004 Palm Island uprising. On November 26th 2004 the people of Palm Island set fire to the local police station, court house and police barracks after a pathologist’s report claimed that the death of Mulrunji Doomadgee, a 36 year old local, in police custody a week earlier was an ‘accident’.
Mulrunji died in a police cell, one hour after he had been arrested for being drunk. He suffered massive internal injuries, including a ruptured spleen, four broken ribs and a ‘liver that had been ‘almost cleaved in two’ from a huge compressive force.’
The officer who arrested him, Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley, claimed that Mulrunji had fallen on stairs. A coroner’s inquest found that Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley was responsible for Mulrunji’s death, as the injuries were consistent with a beating. However, a court found Hurley not guilty for manslaughter. He has since been promoted, rewarded, and is an Inspector on the Gold Coast.
In comparison Lex Wotton has now been sentenced to six years in prison with a non parole period of two years. Despite being a democratically elected leader of his community and spending the duration of the riots attempting to keep the situation peaceful, and even negotiating safe passage for Police off the island – an offer the Police rejected.
Proceeds from the sale of this piece will be donated to Lex Wotton’s support fund to assist paying legal bills and travel bills for his family to visit.
Please join the campaign to bring global awareness to this travesty of justice
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