Oh Sorry, was that your land?
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 the Beyond Nuclear Initiative.
The Beyond Nuclear Initiative (BNI) aims to highlight the adverse impact of the uranium and wider nuclear industry in Australia and promote a nuclear-free future. Project workers engage with a range of stakeholder organisations including: health professionals; trade unions; Aboriginal representative bodies and; human rights organisations to build support networks for affected communities and national awareness of issues facing remote and isolated communities. The project focuses on the interface between the nuclear industry and Indigenous people.
BNI is a joint project of the Arid Lands Environment Centre, Australian Conservation Foundation and Friends of the Earth Australia.