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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Spent today in the city doing some final preparations for the Interventionist Guide.  Aside from the wind, it was one of the most fun days I have had in a very long time!  I am SO looking forward to the show opening so the play can REALLY begin!

Put it in your diaries people! Friday October 2nd, 5pm, Platform Gallery, Flinders Subway, Melbourne.

Also, I look this pregnant now

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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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I’m getting super excited counting down to this years’ Melbourne Social Forum, which is on in just TWO WEEKS!  If you’re never been to a social forum before, it’s kind of like a global economic summit but without the white guys in suits, massive military presence and counter-productive outcomes.  The social forum movement arose as an alternative to the globalisation wave that was sweeping the planet at the end of the last millennium, based around the idea that ‘another world is possible’.

At social forums, grassroots activists who work in the fields of social, economic and environmental justice get together and update each other on campaigns, talk about their work and share skills and resources.

This Melbourne Social Forum there’s gonna be a pretty decent craft presence as the movement is really coming to grips with the idea that a big part of sustainability is making more of the things we use in our lives.  The Craft Cartel is doing a workshop (details to come) about craftivism and some of the issues around the consumerisation of craft.

And of course, there’s gonna be a market at the social forum!  There’s going to be heaps of different organisations with stalls so you can learn about all the campaigns going on and find out what you can do to support them.  And there’s going to be a heap of local, handmade stuff on stalls.  I borrowed a badge maker to make some more stuff to go on my stall and spent yesterday happily making mixed media badges.  There’s some at the top of the post.  Like?  You better come to the Melbourne Social Forum!

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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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Photographic artist JR has produced these giant photographic portraits of Kenyan women and used the images to create water resistant roofing materials for Kibera, one of the largest slums in Africa.

Now THIS is good art.  Not only does it provide a useful visual function by literally putting a face to the sprawling slums.  But it provides a useful function by improving the structure of the buildings themselves.

It must be far too easy for the wealthy to avoid the reality of slums.  If you’re not poor you just don’t go anywhere near them.  This installation brings the lives of the poor to the lives of the wealthy in a very clever way, by air.  Of course planes must fly over these areas!

And what’s most effective is the images themselves.  It’s not your stereotypical victimising wide eyed stare.  These are images of vibrant, awesome and empowered women.  It gives lie to the common perception (mostly perpetuated by neocolonial ‘aid’ agencies) that women living in poverty in Africa are passively accepting of the impacts of colonial economics on their lives.  These images (well, to me anyway) show that these women are not only very aware of the causes of the poverty they experience but are also active participants in the saying ‘the whole world’s watching’.  Pertinent given our current economic climate.

I really hope this work gets the attention it truly deserves.

props: Wooster Collective

Another piece of public art that I adored recently, in fact, had me in stitches, pissing my pants maybe?

Sick of men (mostly) pissing in public at night (do you guys know how much your piss stinks come day time? have you heard of disease?) Questionmarc installed these brilliant signs in Nottingham

Needless to say the local council has strenuously denied that it is acceptable to urinate in public.

Genius.

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Just before Christmas I was approached and asked to participate in The Streets of Melbourne Festival.  It’s the first time this Festival has been run and it’s been designed to showcase and celebrate street culture.  Be it dance, performance, music or art.  The Festival was run over three days in Federation Square in Melbourne.

I decided to use the opportunity to experiment with some ideas I’d been having about large scale cross stitch works.

Given that Federation Square is a privately run space, I was a bit limited in what I could do in terms of overt political statements.  So I decided to go covert.

I’ve been working on stitching QR Codes for some time now.  I’ve been doing them on regular Aida fabric (14 count mostly) and they’ve been working really well.  So I decided to do it large scale.  This project was stitched with black and white finger knitted wool and stitched on animal fencing (which is tough to work with but has a lovely strong and square grid).

QR Codes, or Quick Response Codes are an open source mobile phone read bar code type technology which originated from Japan (download the free reader here).  While the Japanese tend to use QR codes for communicating public service information ie public transport timetables.  The introduction of QR Codes to Australia has largely been based in advertising (ugh).

So I’ve been working QR Codes in cross stitch as a way of exploring non-corporate alternatives to this potentially very interesting and useful communication medium.

The piece designed for The Streets of Melbourne is designed to make a very clear statement on the irony of a privately owned and operated city square.  A space that, within Western culture, has traditionally been the primary space for free speech.  And of course this space in particular is part of the traditional gathering grounds for the people of the Kulin Nations.

It is to the Kulin Nations that this piece, QRacks in the Land, is dedicated.

A very special thanks to Emma for support in making this happen!

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Today is the International Day of Action in solidarity with Palm Island man Lex Wotton who is due to be sentenced in the Brisbane Court for a riot conviction. Despite being the member of the community that assisted police out of the justifiably angry crowd, Lex was scapegoated and is now facing ten years in prison. While the man who murdered his nephew walks free with a $100,000 compensation and a medal.

There are actions happening across the world today. Check the Facebook group for the full list.

My wee contribution to the legal fund is some patches I whipped up. They are lovingly handmade on calico. No screens, just diy, cut and spray. Perfect for your bag. And all proceeds straight to Lex.

Get one (or lots, but probably contact me first re postage) here.

In solidarity

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