Gender Blues
There was this moment in my life where everything became a whole lot clearer; the moment it was explained to me that gender identity is not an either-or, rather it’s a two axis grid. And your position on that grid is not necessarily fixed but can, and often does, shift.
Because, like all forms of identity, gender identity is in the eye of the beholder. We are all unique individuals and whilst we might have many things in common, how we identify ourselves and how we see ourselves within our identities is an entirely personal position. Of course, how society sees these things is an entirely different proposition..
Once I began to see my own gender identity as a fluid spectrum I literally stopped worrying about it. It was as if I had been wearing glasses of the wrong prescription and rather than continue to try and squint to see, I just took them off.
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As part of the Tapysteria Hacks series, I chose to embroider this quote by one of my most significant role models in terms of understanding gender identity, Patti Smith. One day, doilies shall experience that same clarity.
Old School
Old School (2012)
It’s Never Too Late to Mend Exhibition – Incinerator Gallery
Bringing the technique of fence stitching into a gallery context, ‘Old School’ is a homage to the embroidery designers of the 19th and early 20th Centuries. ‘Old School’ is a reference to the little understood history of political craft. ‘Old School’ pays tribute to remix culture and those who seek to keep knowledge free.
The Making and Baking of Banners and Biscuits
The mother as an artist. Disbanding the myth of the artistic sanctuary and a space to create.
Two and a half hours of embroidery, feeding, changing, entertaining, and cuddling.
Photography: Marcus Salvagno
Editing: Karl Fitzgerald
Music: Line of Flight – Revolution Void
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This piece was created for “It’s Never Too Late to Mend”.
The Making and Baking.. was born out of a desire to contribute to the conversation about the value of handmade. All too often purveyors of handmade goods find themselves having to justify their prices in the face of mass production of consumerables. Comparing a uniquely designed, handmade piece of clothing against a one of thousands, sweat shop produced item shouldn’t even happen, yet it does. And far too often makers are left to defend their ‘high’ prices, when the reality is that the mass producers should be the ones explaining their prices. This Is Handmade is a brilliant video project which works with this idea.
The Making and Baking.. was also inspired by observations of gender within the arts. As a mother and an artist I rarely have the luxury of uninterrupted creative time, I share my creative space with small children and I have to manage gallery time with childcare. These are not really issues that phase me as my children are my muses and are very much a part of my practice. What interests me is the different status that artists attract due to their family status. Certainly my experience and observation of group shows is that it’s the single guys who get the most time and attention paid to their art.
Luckily for me, my practice tends to attract similarly radical curators and art workers so my colleagues have always been open to supporting my children being present and part of my art. However, I know this is not reflective of the art world as a whole. Hopefully this piece will plant some seeds for people to think about the way they value art workers as parents.
Thanks again to Marcus, Karl, Hannah, Jose and the kids for helping put this piece together, arohanui xx
What Else Could Go Here?
Ahoy me hearties! Land pirates straight ahead!
Oh to be a speculator.
It must be such a great life buying up blocks of land, sitting on them for a few years watching the community grow and the infrastructure develop, then when the time is right, flip them off for some easy capital gains. Even better when the land isn’t in your suburb so you can externalize the problems that vacant land creates like weeds, rubbish, vandalism and housing affordability pressures. Even better when the council has a rates system that charges on land and buildings so the blocks around yours with houses and businesses on them have to pay more than you do.
Well, just ’cause the council thinks it’s ok for all these pirates to be sailing around our hood, looting the bounty created by our communities, doesn’t mean the Melbourne Revolutionary Craft Circle does.
We’re sick of looking at these blocks. We want a re-imagining of how we use land in Maribyrnong. We want to address housing, sprawl, waste, food security, transport, health, community gardening and play. In our separate lives we work on these projects but are daily undermined by the pirates. We want the people of Maribyrnong to join with us in starting the conversation about the blight on our suburbs that is vacant land and what the Council plans on doing about it.
Currently, they don’t see it as a problem.
So, we ask the question “What else could go here?” We are surrounded in blank canvases and we call on all citizens to spend some time thinking about what better ways we can use this land. Let’s keep animals, let’s grow food, let’s grow trees, let’s build parks!
Have you an idea? Put it on your closest fence tonight! Or get some chalk and write your ideas on the footpath! Use your imagination people, our communities are in our hands.
Love + rage
MRCC
It’s Never Too Late To Mend
You are all very very very welcome to my first ever solo exhibition “It’s Never Too Late To Mend”.
The show runs from Friday the 13th of April until Sunday the 13th of May. It is showing at Incinerator Gallery in Moonee Ponds, Melbourne. For those who don’t know Incinerator, it is one of Melbourne’s most beautiful buildings. It was originally designed by Walter Burley Griffin (aka the guy that designed Canberra) as an actual incinerator, one of a number he designed at the time. At the time, locals were concerned about the amount of waste going to landfill and decided they wanted an incinerator to turn the waste into clinker ash which could be used on the large number of roads which were being sealed at the time. There’s a great article about the history of the building (including a cute photo of my curator, Richard), here.
While the building wasn’t used for its original purpose for very long, it now exists as one of the greatest community assets in the West. And even decades on, the fantastic design of the building proves that function shouldn’t preclude beauty.
It is truly (a sometimes daunting!) honour to be showing in this wonderful space.
It’s Never Too Late To Mend is part retrospective and part new work and it covers a wide range of mediums from traditional canvas needlework through to large installations, photography and animations.
The timing of this opportunity was perfect. I had just come out of a six month break from ‘work’ craft and over that time I had spent a lot of time reading craft and design history and teaching myself new techinques. Most significantly I re-read The Subversive Stitch (AN ABSOLUTE MUST READ!!!!!) and spent a lot of time considering which direction I wanted to take my craft in. I see most of my work as having two roles: 1. Encouraging creative types to be more political (and more brave) and 2. Encouraging activists to be more creative (and less serious..). But the more I meditated on these ideas, the more I realised that there was a third role that I hoped my work would play which was to encourage better design. Not that I really see myself as a particularly good designer, but I do believe that in this time of global ecological crisis we are facing, if we are going to make stuff, we should make a real effort to ensure it’s bloody good stuff that’s going to be around for a while.
In this exhibition, I have examined the history of needlework design and come to the conclusion that, bar a few exceptional examples, needlework design has been pretty rubbish since the end of the art nouveau and art deco periods. In fact, if you want fine examples of cross stitch design, you’re better off going back further than that.
So I have sought to go back to those times and pick up some of those design techniques and bring them to a new time and place.
It’s Never Too Late To Mend asks creative communities to consider our roles as makers and vision shapers, to consider the urgency of our consumerist climatic crisis: to reflect on our practice and demand the best of ourselves for the sake of our collective imagination.
Real Estate 4 Ransom
Y’know economics can be really boring. All that lingo, boring white dudes and acronyms. Anyone would think they made it boring on purpose so we wouldn’t pay attention to how much economics is the single greatest driver of our planets destruction. And anyone who thinks this has nothing to do with craft oughta read this.
What we really need is economics with wicked beats, and plain speak. Then maybe we would pay attention and sort this madness out before our lovely planet is unfit for habitation.
Oh wait, here you go.
Watch. Share. Agitate.
(check out the fence stitching)
Progressions
It’s been a bit quiet around here as I’ve been very busy stitching!
For those of you who have been following the progress of the WE are Wyndham Vale project, the photos in this post are all progress shots for you to check out. Submissions closed last week and there was some truly visionary ideas contributed to the project. I can just imagine all of the ideas coming to life and Wyndham Vale becoming a truly sustainable and vibrant community!
I am in the throes of stitching now and I invite anyone who wants to join in to come down to Iramoo and get involved. I’ll be there in the kitchen stitching for the following sessions next week:
Monday (25th Jul), Wednesday (27th), Thursday (28th), Monday (1st Aug) from 11.30-2.30.
If you have always wanting to learn embroidery, come along and I will give you a lesson. Or if you’ve been stitching since birth, and everyone in between, come along and stitch your favourite part of the map. All materials are provided. We’ll be hanging in the kitchen stitching, drinking tea, and eating cake! If you haven’t been there before and want to come along the Iramoo community centre is at 84 Honour Avenue, Wyndham Vale.
I have a date for the unveiling too. Stay tuned for news on that another exciting workshop!
Iramoo!
Tomorrow is the first day of my exciting new adventure, a three month artist residency at the Iramoo Community Centre in Wyndham Vale. For those of you not terribly familiar with Wyndham Vale it’s right next to Werribee on Melbourne’s South-Western most border. In fact the community centre looks right out over some classic western basalt plains.
It’s an interesting little suburb. Some parts old and some parts new, both in houses and in people. It’s a quiet wee spot but has a really interesting and engaged little community. It’s very much like my suburb. One of those spots surrounded in busy bustlingness so often gets overlooked and as a result has a little village feel.
For my residency I’m going to be based in the local environment centre which is tucked away in a quiet street overlooking the delightfully tranquil Lollipop Creek. I’m going to be up to all sorts of lovely mischief involving different groups within the community and using all sorts of materials from local natural materials through to industrial offcuts from local businesses. And whatever else I stumble across along the way.
Alongside the environment centre is a giant heavily laden apple tree. So to kick start the residency I’m going to host a apple sauce making day with locals and anyone else interested in coming. Details about that soon.
In the meantime, I’d love to ear if any of my readers are out that way. Or if you know anyone who lives nearby who’d be interested in some craft workshops or just plain ol play time, please pass this on. I’ll be sending out email newsletters about this project so if you want to be on it, drop me a line.
Craft Cartel takes on Sydney
Image: Cecilie Knowles
Yep still catching up on blog posts..
A few weeks ago the Craft Cartel cruised up to Object Gallery in Sydney for We Craft This City.
And we had a riot!
The opening was delicious with a lovely turnout of people on a sunny Saturday morning. Might have had something to do with the champagne and yummy treats from the Frankie books on hand. Thanks so much to all the wonderful people who made the treats, seriously nom!
The highlight of the day was the workshops. Sadly I missed the first one as I had to sneak out for some breakfast. The second workshop was the Craft Cartel one and we initiated the locals into the joys of handmade ammunition. It was such fun. I just adored the intense looks of concentration as everyone negotiated the wool, hooks and loo paper rolls.
The next workshop was the Knitty, Gritty, Loopy plarning workshop. As a recent crochet convert I was pretty keen to get into this one and had fun making my own little crochet bowl. And I must confess to a couple of little sneaky goes since I’ve got back. It’s addictive!
And of course we had a bunch of stuff exhibited in the gallery. The Craft Cartel had a stockpile of knitted and crocheted ammunition.
And Casey and Ann had their rad embroideries
And I had the Sampler, the Oh Sorry, Was that your Land? piece, the QR code time series (which I still haven’t really blogged about properly, but you can get the feel for the project by reading these posts) and a new piece, Make Revolution
Some readers may recognise this piece as a Groundswell design. When I saw the original poster design a couple of years back I just knew I had to stitch it! It was stitched direct on linen and took me months and months (and almost my eye sight!) to complete but I’m so happy with it. I was super proud to get some great feedback about this piece during the show. Massive thanks to David Morgan for giving me permission to use the design!
After the opening day, there was a screening of Making it Handmade at the Mu Meson Archives. Wow! What an amazing venue! I highly recommend all you Sydney types out there check it out if you haven’t already. There was a full house and quite an interesting conversation took place at the end of the screening. The film is certainly provoking debate and I’m planning a Craft Cartel podcast interview with the director, Anna Brownfield real soon so we can get into some of the issues in more depth.
If you still haven’t seen the film, it is available for purchase now on DVD! Perfect present for that crafter in your life. Especially if YOU’RE that crafter in your life.
And yes, Sydney was fabulous to visit. The highlight for me was definitely checking out the Oh Alfred! fence installation at Alfred Park. I took far too many photos to post up here so check out the whole gallery on our Facebook Page (may as well Like us while you’re there 
). Do check them all out – such phenomenal work! The installation was on a temporary fence surrounding the park upgrade and was based on the community’s memories and experiences within the park. Truly stunning and overwhelmingly inspirational!!
Thanks for having us Sydney I hope to be back soon!
For the love of craft,
Rayna
SITE: Digital Embroidered Commons at Sculpture Now!?!
Righto! Who’s up for a stitch-a-long?
Radical Cross Stitch is teaming up with Public Assembly to create a contribution to the Digital Embroidered Commons project that’s being facilitated by the amazing Ele Carpenter. We will be stitching the term SITE and we want you to help!
We’re creating an installation piece as part of the Sculpture Now!?! exhibition at the Yarra Sculpture Gallery and we are creating a craft room inside the gallery for the purposes of stitching the term together. And we’d love you to join us.
We will be in the gallery for three making sessions. Each session complete with cups of tea, baked goods and of course, radical discussion.
“SITE: Location, both as in the fact of being somewhere, and also, as in the answer to the question of “where”, that “somewhere” is. Hence, situation.”
Step into our craft room, make yourself a cuppa and pick up a needle. All welcome, no experience necessary. Join us as we embrace the radical political and artistic spirit of centuries of craft circles to unpick the big issues of the day.
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Public sessions:
Friday 27th August 5-8pm (open session – this is the official opening of the show so will be a tad busy..)
Thursday 2nd September 1-4 (limited spaces, RSVP kids welcome)
Sunday 5th September 1-4 (limited spaces, RSVP kids welcome)
The installation is viewable as a snapshot of a work in progress at all other times
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Sculpture Now!?! will deliver a snapshot of the current thematic and conceptual influences that inform contemporary sculptural practice in Australia. The artists range from emerging to established with an emphasis on innovation and experimentation. The exhibition aspires to shed some light on the myriad of diverse trajectories in which sculptural practice is heading.
Other artists participating: Stelarc, Hannah Bertram, Rod McRae, Karleena Mitchell, Petra Svoboda, Junky Projects, Eliza-Jane Gilchrist, Linelle Septo, Lucie Hallenstein