Talking Craft and Crafting Craft
Hi folks
How are ya? Things are cruising along rather nicely in Radical Cross Stitch land; projects slowly coming to completion, babies growing nicely, plenty of baking going on. Goodness this winter is a bit chilly isn’t it? Really can’t wait for Spring and Summer to brighten our lives again.
In the meantime, there’s a couple of events coming up you should know about.
Firstly, as part of the State of Design Festival, the Craft Cartel is going to be part of a panel discussion during the Counter Point project at Melbourne Central. Together with Citizens of Elysium, Clothing Exchange and The Social Studio, we’ll be chatting about the social and environmental realities of consumerist culture and what the alternatives are. I’m really looking forward to this event, there’s some great people on the panel and it’s part of a really interesting and subversive larger project. I do hope you can come along!
(click on images for larger view)
Next up on the events calendar is SUPER TOP SECRET and I truly can’t tell you about it yet. But it is ACE!!!!!! and it’s about craft and it has some other super people involved and it’s in Melbourne on August 1st. So put that day in your diary, I swear I’ll tell you all the details as soon as I can. One word though. SQUEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!! Ok one more word, POPCORN.
Flicking over in the calendar a bit the Craft Cartel are heading to Sydney in October to participate in We Craft This City at Object Gallery. We’re pretty super excited about this one! We may even be heading up a bit earlier to do some sunny, spring time crafting in the park to get people ready and excited about the show. Will let you know if that happens. But what’s definitely happening is some hard core Craft Cartel knitted dynamite action. And you can be part of the fun! Just pop over to the tutorial and grab yourself some wool. We’re trying to get the worlds largest knitted ammunition cache together. We’d LOVE you to help!
Finally 3CR subscribers would have already got your copy (I think..) but the theme of this years Radiothon was ‘Handmade Radio’ and the lovely Nicole asked me to help her make a handmade radio tutorial. Nicole did some ace instructions for a plushie radio and I contributed some patterns for some speech bubbles to come out of the radio. Pretty darn fun!
And to help with the super important efforts of keeping community radio on air, I will pledge $20 for anyone who sends me photos of their completed hand made radio. G’arn!
(click on images for larger view)
Don’t Hate the Media, Be the Media
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.
An Old Skool Sampler
If you got your hands on a copy of the 2010 3CR Seeds of Dissent Calendar and flicked it open to everyone’s favourite consumerist month: December, this is what you’ll find:
Each of the contributing artists was asked to chose a theme and using our creative tools, discuss that issue in relation to the future. I chose an anti-consumerist/waste theme (obviously). And decided this was an opportunity to finally get around to stitching my sampler.
A sampler is something a learner stitcher is supposed to do. But it’s more than just about learning, it’s a kind of right of passage. And having now seen samplers from my own family, I have been keen to get into doing my own for a while.
This particular sampler is loosely based off the design of the sampler by Margaret Harper (1782) so it really is pretty old skool. But following on with an old tradition of subverting the ‘feminine arts’ the quote is not biblical, yet still rather moralistic and prescriptive.
We were also asked to provide a few words about what our piece was about. Here’s mine:
A Sampler For Our Times
In this time of global environmental and economic crisis the looming challenges can sometimes seem insurmountable, especially considering that Australia is the biggest carbon consuming country on our lovely planet.
While the challenge to turn this around may seem enormous it is not impossible to meet. One of the most important and effective changes we need to take on is our relationship with stuff. Indeed, it is our obsession with material things that is such a massive contributor to our environmental excesses.
There is an age-old saying, commonly heard during the last global depression, ‘Use it up, Wear it out, Make do, or Do without’. It sounds a bit dreary. But people who are relearning the skill of making things themselves can testify that when you MAKE culture rather than simply consuming it, life all of a sudden becomes a hell of a lot more interesting, revolutionary even.
This cross-stitched piece is a traditional sampler but with a modern twist. A sampler was a coming-of-age process for a young woman, especially during the 1800s. Samplers were employed not only to teach basic stitches for decoration and mending but also to learn basic literacy and numeracy skills, as well as a bit of healthy moralistic indoctrination. The quotes included were often biblical and always included some guiding doctrine to live by. Sometimes they were cheekily subversive. This piece hopes to continue that tradition.
You really need a copy of this Calendar on your wall next year! So get onto the website and grab a copy. Or even better, come to the launch at Readings Carlton on Friday the 13th of November at 6pm and pick up a copy and a nice glass of wine. And say hi to the artists and the great team that made this awesome calendar happen.
As for the original piece, I’m looking for somewhere to put it on display with the view to sell it to raise even more funds for 3CR. I’ve got a couple of options but I’m open to hearing other ideas. So if you have a brilliant wall in a shop, gallery, museum or whatever that you think would be just perfect to have this hanging on, get in touch.
Finally, and before you all ask, yes the pattern will be available for sale very soon. And of course, all proceeds go straight to 3CR – to keep Melbourne’s most radical radio, rad!
3..2..1.. Launch!
3CR’s Seeds of Dissent Calendar Launch
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.
Not one, but three (and a half..)
It’s been a bit quiet on the ol’ RCS blog as of late. Partly due to the never ending joys of pregnancy (promise not to bore you with the details..) but also partly due to the busyness of preparing for some upcoming exhibitions. And it’s about time our lovely readers got to hear the details!
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