As readers of Radical Cross Stitch will know I am a big time fan of Melbourne community radio station 3CR.  There is nothing like turning on the ol’ wireless to hear people from my own communities talking about news and issues that are relevant to me and the lives of the people around me.  And it’s even better that I never hear any loud voices screaming at me to quickly empty my pockets into the hands of giant corporate consumerist empires!

So I didn’t hesitate for a second last year when the fine folk there asked me to contribute to the 2010 Seeds of Dissent Calendar.  I still consider that piece to be my greatest stitching achievement so far and I was super happy over the weekend to finally pick it up from the framers after a 12 month hunt for the PERFECT vintage frame.

Well I promised that I’d make the pattern available and at long last it’s now in store.  And if you hurry and grab it over the next couple of days it’s half price (sale ends Friday).  Proceeds go straight to 3CR! If you don’t already know the 3CR Radiothon is on NOW! So you should pop over to their website and become a subscriber. The theme for radiothon this year is Handmade Radio and subscribers get a copy of CRAM which contains a fab pattern to make your own radio! Including some wee cross stitch embellishment patterns from me.

Need more reasons to love 3CR? Check the spunks in this wee clip

3CR Radiothon TVC 2010 from 3cr on Vimeo.

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Everyone is welcome to come to the Calendar Launch on Friday, November 13 at Readings Bookshop in Carlton at 6pm for free wine and talk! [Readings is located at 309 Lygon St, Carlton, Victoria: Phone (03) 9347 6633.]

Face Up To The Future! with 3CR’s fifth Seeds Of Dissent Calendar. 3CR asked 12 artists who are part of Australian activist culture to contribute an artwork that reflects their idea of the future.

In 2006, 3CR created a Seeds of Dissent! Calendar to celebrate 3CR’s 30th birthday. The full colour, nationally distributed calendar teemed with radical dates, ideas and inspiration for social change. The calendar sold out of its 2000 copies. Since then 3CR’s Promotions Sub Committee’s Calendar Team has produced a yearly calendar, each with a fresh theme.

Face Up ToThe Future! — 3CR’s fifth Seeds Of Dissent Calendar — looks ahead to imagine a future we want to live in, while also celebrating Australia’s radical history. We asked 12 artists who are part of Australian activist culture to contribute an artwork that reflects their idea of the future. Some artists have created images that imagine the ideal future and some have chosen to depict issues we need to address today in order to achieve it.

Australian history re-envisioned with a cheeky female bushranger, uranium mining and the need to recognise the interdependence of ecology, the tyrannical expectations of female beauty, the return of tumbling as a form of transportation (!), Indigenous people at the heart of popular culture… these are the some of the issues explored by artists such as Arlene Texta Queen, Deborah Kelly, Bindi Cole, Adam Hill, Tom O’Hern, Mitch [? sorry Mitch], Jo Waite, Rayna Fahey (that would be me), Tom Civil, Mickie Quick, Lachlan Conn and Paul J Kalemba.

Cross-stitched samplers, stencils, felt pen drawings, collages, cartoons, illustration, computer art… these are the media the artists use to take us into the future of the 2010 Seeds of Dissent Calendar.

Also!

How to Make Trouble and Influence People

is a wonderful new book by some trouble-making bloke called Iain McIntyre, and is published by the redoubtable and not-at-all nervous Breakdown Press.

Launched in Newcastle at TINA it will be launched again, kicking and screaming, in Melbourne on THURSDAY the 5th NOVEMBER (remember, remember..) at the BELLA UNION BAR (Victorian Trades Hall, cnr Victoria and Lygon Streets) between the hours of 6 and 8pm.

The book compiles tales of unconventional political dissent included in three previously-published pamphlets — How To Make Trouble And Influence People (1996), How to Stop Whining and Start Living (1998) and Revenge Of The Troublemaker (2003) — and, as an EXTRA! ADDED! BONUS!, interviews with a number of pranksters, photos galore, and er, other stuff.

Thanks @ndy for the blog post which I just nicked and reposted here.  There’s plenty of Radical Cross Stitch in BOTH these publications so make sure you get along to at least one of these great nights. And make sure you get your copy of the calendar! It does look fantastic. It’s a must have for your wall in 2010.

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I have installed four pieces of work around the streets now and planning a fair few more.  For those of you in Melbourne, put October 16-18 in your diary as the weekend where all the artists will be hitting the streets for performances, tours, installations and other creative bits and pieces.

Two of the four pieces have already been on here:

And here’s some pics of the latest couple.

You might recognise the last piece from here.

For this show us artists were asked to consider urban space: how it’s built, how we relate to it, how others relate to it.  And for me it is very much about questions of ownership, access, power and control.  My experiences of Melbourne’s CBD have been quite varied; as a worker, an activist, a resident, a mother, a pregnant woman, a public transport user, a cyclist, a pedestrian.  None of those experiences have meant much control in the space so I’ve managed to experience quite varied forms of discrimination in that space.

I’m also very aware of the access issues other people face.  Those in wheelchairs is a prime example.  It’s hard enough getting around with a pram sometimes, but even harder with a wheel chair.  You learn a whole different path of navigation around the city that able bodied people just don’t ever need to consider.  Another example is the elderly.  I do know people who live in Melbourne who haven’t visited the CBD in over a decade because it’s just too hard and intimidating.  They prefer the relative safety of the suburbs where they can get everything they need without the (media driven) fear of the city space. And there’s of course other reasons, language especially.

This all means that there is a large amount of people who are simply excluded from that space, they are invisible.

I got wondering just how many other people thought about these issues and I figured probably not too many.  Discrimination tends not to be something you think about until you experience it, and spatial experience is something that even those that experience it, aren’t necessarily aware of.  The idea that our cities and buildings are designed by and for able-bodied white guys is such a given that considerations for other needs are rarely made.

I always find department stores pretty amazing in their design.  If you stop and look at actually who uses a department store, women are by far the majority.  Yet even their designs rarely accommodate their needs.  If it’s a multi story building you will almost always find the baby wares department above or beyond ground level.  So a woman with a pram is going to need to negotiate at least one floor change to get there.  And given you aren’t supposed to use an escalator with a pram it can sometimes take longer to get to the department you want than to find the actual item you’re looking for once your there.  And that’s if you can get through the aisles.  It’s astonishing how many shops selling baby things I have been into with a pram that have aisles narrower than the average pram..

So a lot of the pieces I’m doing are talking about different peoples’ relationships with space.  And also the stuff that moves through the space.  Especially given a fair chunk of the urban space is dedicated to the peddling of stuff.

The piece above on the rubbish bin is one such piece.  Very much geared towards encouraging people to consider how easily and flippantly we throw things away.  Rather than focussing on whether you can recycle something or not, I’m more interested in people thinking about why they needed this throw away thing in the first place.  It seems that so many people still believe that the solutions to climate change and the rampant abuse of our planet are decisions to be made by politicians and CEOs.  While those people certainly have a role, the role of the consumer in changing their own behaviour is just as, if not more important.  In a country with the highest per capita emissions in the world, we really need to start thinking about why we invest so much energy in making things just to have a short, uninteresting interaction with the thing and then throw it away.  There’s got to more to life.

So these are just some of the issues that I think about when engaging with the urban fabric.  And I am sure these are completely different to the issues the other artists consider.  I urge you to visit the website and visit the gallery and check them all out.

And most importantly, I urge you to grab a map from the gallery and get out into the city and consider your own relationships with the spaces within and what opportunities you see for artistic practice and engagement.  Then head back to the gallery and share your ideas with the rest of us!

And now for some pics of the opening.  Thanks to all who came it was a great night!

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Firstly, opening next week in Jönköpings, Sweden, is “Craftwerk 2.0: New Household Tactics for the Popular Crafts”.

Craftwerk 2.0 is an exhibition that explores the new “updated” textile crafts that are developed by a new generation of serious amateurs, innovative craftsmen, engaged entrepreneurs and political practitioners.

This is one of the biggest craft exhibitions on the calendar this year and the RCS crew is most excited to be a part of it! Both I and the Ninja have pieces in the show including ‘Oh Sorry, was that your land?’, ‘Homes for All’, Mario map, and an as yet unseen series of QR codes.  There’s some really interesting events running with the show and I urge anyone anywhere near Sweden to put this show in your diary!  The exhibition runs from September 19 until January 16 2010.

The next exhibition on the agenda is Explosive Expression, an Art Auction and Exhibition in commemoration of the second anniversary of the State Terror Raids in New Zealand of October 15th, 2007.  For more info on the Exhibition and the Auction (online bids are welcome for those not able to be in Wellington) check out the website and the Facebook event.

I was most honoured to be asked to contribute to this show.  As readers will probably know, I am friends with a number of the defendants so have paid close attention to the developments of the cases.  But aside from that I am appalled at the massive amounts of money being spent by the NZ counter terrorism unit investigating activists.  As the Greens warned when this legislation was first introduced, it’s about giving massive powers to Police which encroach on civil liberties.  And they warned from day one, due to the complete lack of domestic terrorism the legislation would inevitably be used to monitor and stifle dissent.

Whether or not the defendants are found guilty on the charges they all face is quite irrelevant to the overall issue that the Police spent over $10million investigating, using intensely intrusive surveillance techniques, a significant proportion of the NZ activist community in the name of counter-terrorism.   They executed warrants on homes across the country and literally terrorised entire communities and homes containing small children.

The small group of people now facing relatively minor charges in comparison to the hype created around the initial raids now have to face the ‘justice’ system and receive a fair trial.  To do this they need massive contributions towards their defence.  Not just to cover the legal costs but also the costs of travel for the defendants and their families every time they need to be in court.

I urge anyone out there with an interest in collecting art, particularly political art to check out the works on the website and consider making a bid.  Especially those of you in countries with strong currencies!  The NZ Dollar is buying about 70 US cents at the mo’ so money coming in from overseas will go further

The piece I have contributed is called ‘Security Glam’ and is based on this image that came out of a collaboration between our friends at the Groundswell Collective and Artists at War

I will post an image of the completed piece once it’s on the Oct 15th Solidarity site.

Thirdly, I was asked a while back to participate in a Melbourne show (finally!!) and there was no way I was going to say no to this one!  Curated by the super inspiring Lynda Roberts from Public Assembly, the Interventionist Guide to Melbourne is a group show of work by artists who focus their work in engaging with the urban fabric.

The show is both gallery and street based with the Platform Gallery being transformed into a virtual map of Melbourne revealing sites for individuals and groups to creatively and temporarily intervene within the existing urban fabric.

Each artist will contribute work in various mediums but each will be editing a zine guide as to how to go out and ‘do’ their form of intervention.  The works will inspire members of the public to go out and do their own interventions which can be documented and will add to the show.

My work is very much focussed around challenging notions of space, particularly around issues of ownership, construction and access.  I’ll be sharing the skills for three types of craft based intervention and am pleased to say none of it involves yarn bombing..

The opening is on October the 2nd at Platform (FB event here) and continues until the 30th.  Contributing artists will also be out on the street on Oct 16-18 intervening! Keep an eye on the website for more details.

Finally – and this is the half – I’ve been working on a page for the 2010 3CR Calendar.  It’s one of the major fundraising activities for Melbourne’s best grassroots community, activist radio station.  And I was super honoured to be asked to contribute.  So it’s not really an exhibition as such, but a group show appearing on a wall near you!  I understand the calendar is about to go to the printers and I think the launch is in November some time.  Will let you know details when I know them.

The piece I contributed is an antique inspired sampler with an anti-consumerist theme.  Reckon you old skool cross stitchers out there will love it.  I’m also going to release the pattern as a fundraiser for 3CR, it’ll be available in the Radical Rags store sometime later this year.

So I reckon there’s been about 80,000 or so stitches over the last few months which hopefully explains the lack of blog words! I’ll update this site over the next few weeks with more images and details as they come to hand.

Thanks for stopping in to make sure we’re still here

xox

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by Sublime Stitching.

Rayna has a great chat with Faythe about the film, making zines, the GFC, and yes, Paris Hilton comes up again!  Check out the Handmade Nation website and blog and Flickr site to see pics of the Aussie tour and of course, the Paris Hilton pics. A MASSIVE big thanks to the awesome people at in.cube8r Gallery in Smith Street for helping to make this interview happen!

The track off the podcast is Craft Talk by Leslie Hall.  It’s Craft-tastic! Check the video:

Next up we bring back the zine review section and review:

The Thrity Crafter from Apartment Cat
Sharp and Pointy – a craft zine by mir UPDATE – you can buy it here!
Outdoor Knit: the graffiti knit kit from Outdoor Knit

And a bit of an update on the Craft Cartel. Check out the Fashion Jam pics here, read about Trash Bag Rehab here, and the Melbourne Social Forum here, and the City Press workshop here!

Phew!

And as always we’d love to hear from you, comment below or drop us a line. And don’t forget to check out the archive if you’re new round here.

The best way to listen to the podcast is to subscribe and download today!

If that doesn’t work  you can download the file directly from here.

We really don’t like advertising very much round these parts, so if you like what you hear, please make a donation to help support future episodes. It’s what an add-free world sounds like.

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As soon as we arrived, I arranged to meet up with Dr Joyce Stalker whom people might remember from her talk in Melbourne last year. We met Joyce at the school of education where some of her work is on display in the foyer (text from the show).

Nice Women II
70 used tea filters, 70 beading clusters, brown cotton thread
60x95cm
2008

Each year, the [NZ] Police receive 70,000 call outs for domestic violence, an average of one every 7 1/2 minutes. It is estimated that five times as many people acknowledge family violence as call out the police. Meanwhile, nice women sip their tea.

Money Down The Drain
My Mother’s (green) quilt remnants gifted to me on her death, PVC drain pipe, glue, bucket.
50x200cm
2008

Once the quintessential example of recycling acumen, today quilting is a highly commercialised activity. Most quilters, already committed to a search for perfection, now search for the perfect palette, pattern and shading among fabrics manufactured specifically for quilts. We have every right to spend money on or hobbies, but when second hand clothing stores overflow with 100% cotton items, when drains in developing nations run with the colour of toxic textile dyes, I can’t help but wonder if we have too easily let our world of fabric craft be taken over by commercial interests.

My Heritage is Bigger than “I Am”
heritage quilt made by my Grandmother, canvas, embroidery thread
122x175cm
2008

Seventeen years after emigrating to New Zealand Aotearoa, I feel more sharply than ever the loss of my Canadian heritage. I have read that McCahon is this country’s greatest artist and been told that all artists here reference him. I remain stubbornly unmoved by his dark and complex works and deeply stirred by the fabric of my family’s lives.

Night Sounds on Pitcairn Island
used zippers, embroidery thread
80x240cm
2008

Like quilts, zippers can carry many messages. They can be sensual and suggestive, but stories from Pitcairn Island remind us that they can carry darker messages. Romanticized as the windswept refuge of The Bounty’s mutineers, Pitcairn’s history is now tied to the reality of generations of islanders who tolerated the systemic abuse and rape of the island’s young girls.

BACKGROUND

These fabric works originally were part of Threadbare: An exhibition of unruly quilts held at Artspost, Hamilton, 29 August to 22 September, 2008.

Threadbare was a collaborative project between D Wood (a studio furniture artist lecturing at the School of Media Design, Wintec) and Joyce Stalker (an associate Professor lecturing in adult education at the School of Education, Univerty of Waikato).

The purpose of the Threadbare exhibition was to explore what happens when orthodox quilt processes and messages were challenged or eliminated completely – in other words, when quilters and quilts became unruly. We played with the traditional elements of quilt design: repetition (duplication of a predetermined module), pattern (arrangement of the module), layering (front, filling and back), and fixing (method of holding elements together).

I really enjoyed taking some time to see this work.  I was particularly impacted by the Pitcairn piece as I was working in Parliament at the time that story was prominent in the news.  There was quite a process trying to figure out between the various governments involved, the Islanders and the victims what would be an appropriate way to trial the offenders.  I remember the universal horror at the story.  I remember how everyone just stopped dead in their tracks trying to imagine how ingrained and systemic the abuse was for something so awful to go on for so long.

The Pitcairn piece sits nicely with the Tea piece in connecting up quite how universal the systemic violence against women and children in our society really is.  And also how universal the culture of silence and denial is.

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After catching up with Joyce, we heading down to the Migrant Resource Centre (which is an AWESOME venue for a talk) for the talk I was giving about radical craft history.

Despite being 4pm on a Tuesday, there was a great turnout and everyone there was involved in actively creating craft or change in the community.  We had a fantastic discussion after my presentation and it was so inspiring to see so many active thinkers on the issues surrounding craft, women’s knowledge and activist theory.

Even better is that the group decided to meet again soon!  Here’s the callout:

To all Hamilton craftivists, anarcho-embroiderers, eco-crocheters, knitta-street-artists, radical quilters, indy needleworkers, contemporary textile artists, Luddite lacemakers, evolutionary creators, creative evolutionists, stitching saboteurs, etc etc

You are cordially invited to the Vicarage to foment revolution over your needlework.

Whether you are looking for a crafty political collaboration or just some interesting company and conversation while you finish the project that’s starting to drag, this gathering will be more interesting than anything on TV. If we have enough fun we might want to do this regularly.

Forward this invitation and bring your crafty friends along too.

Where: The Vicarage, 25 Thames St, Claudelands (the house with the wooden fence next to the carpark on the corner of Thames and Heaphy)

When: Tuesday 17 March, 7.30pm

What to bring: A handcraft project to work on, your crafty friends

RSVP Meliors

I look forward to hearing reports of what this group gets up to!

Thanks tons to Joyce for organising the talk and all those who helped spread the word.  And thanks to Meliors for picking up the needle and getting the group going!

Finally, I did record the talk so I’ll put up a link when it’s online.

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Sorry Hamilton! I have neglected you for far too long.  Hope to see as many locals there as can make it.

RSVP on Facebook and spread the word.

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See you there!

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Betsy has a great big long chat with Rayna about her new book, consciousness in the craft world and Paris Hilton.  Yip, Paris Hilton.  You have to listen to hear what that’s about. The three links as discussed in the interview are: d.d.i.y. don’t do it yourself by Lisa Anne Auerbach from the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. The Story of Stuff The Gas Station Project by Jennifer Marsh And you can win a copy of the book!  Just send the answer to the question in the podcast by March 31 to go in the draw to get your own copy of this gorgeous book. And as always we’d love to hear from you, comment below or drop us a line. And don’t forget to check out the archive if you’re new round here. The best way to listen to the podcast is to subscribe and download today!

If that doesn’t work (and it might not, we’re still having issues with the plugin that runs these things…) you can download the file directly from here.

We really don’t like advertising very much round these parts, so if you like what you hear, please make a donation to help support future episodes. It’s what an add-free world sounds like.

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Submissions are now open for the 4th issue of Hoopla – the world’s most revolutionary craft zine.

The theme for Issue #4 is MAKEing Love. As always the theme is open to interpretation (you can even ignore it completely) but is based around the idea that craft action is positivist action. It’s about creating the world we want to see as opposed to protesting against the way things are.

Submissions welcome in the form of pictures, patterns and writing or a combination of the three. Also looking for volunteers for proof reading, page layouts and cover design.

Submission deadline March 31. Email here.

Also Hoopla is in need of a promotional flyer. If you’re partial to a bit of design and want to win a copy of all the issues of Hoopla we’re looking for an A5 flyer design. The flyer must contain the following information:

Hoopla: a craft zine for revolutionaries
-patterns
-pictures
-inspiration
-fun

http://radicalcrossstitch.com/hoopla-radical-craft-zine

Other than that it’s totally over to you. The winner will be chosen by the hoopla collective.

Entry deadline March 31.

Look forward to seeing all your entries and submissions!!  And a special big thanks to all those who have already sent some in.  This is looking like a bumper issue!

gorgeous pic from Anna.Lisa

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