10 words or less - sum up the experience.

ArtKeeper supported me to be ambitious, experimental and to grow.

You set out to create the largest textile work you’ve ever attempted. How did you go?

I dedicated the 6 months of my ArtKeeper residency to creating a large-scale installation artwork that explores the power and pain of feminine rage through a combination of textiles and sound. This is the first time I’ve attempted to translate my 2D textile work into a 3D form and the first time I’ve incorporated sound into my work. The time, space and support to undertake this kind of ambitious experimentation is one of the unique gifts that ArtKeeper gives its artists.

To give a sense of the scale of the work I’ve undertaken, the textile element of the installation is made up of a 3m high x 9m wide hanging made using repurposed theatre curtains salvaged from HOTA. This work will be suspended in a large oval from the ceiling, with the figurative appliqued artwork facing the inside, so that audiences must enter the work to view it. In this softened, visually alluring space, audiences will find a seat and some headphones where they can choose spend time listening to the audio component of the work which features 10 different voices reading out 60 reflections from different female identifying people who shared their experience with feminine rage with me via an anonymous survey.

You ran a ‘Very Cross Stitch’ community workshop during your residency. How did that feed into your project?

As a socially engaged artist, creating opportunities to engage and involve people in the creation of my work is central to my practice. For this project, along with the 60 female identifying people who wrote to me about their experience with anger and the 10 women who read these stories out for the audio component of this installation, I invited the public to physically contribute to the textile artwork by cross-stitching onto the work itself. This process will be something I repeat ahead of every installation of this artwork, meaning that over time the artwork will slowly fill in with hundreds and thousands of hand stitched crosses that, for me, are a physical remnant of the energy and emotions that participants brought to the space on the day they contributed to this work. Over time, as the work is exhibited in different contexts, I hope that it fills up with many more tiny cross-stitches made by community members keen to express their quiet rage with needle and thread.

What was the biggest challenge for you during this residency?

Conceptually, my project was very clear in its aims from the very beginning, meaning that for me the biggest challenge of this residency was the sheer amount of physical labour involved in the sewing of the textile artwork. I knew this going in, and yet for some reason, I spent a bit of time procrastinating at the start of the residency… which of course meant I was flat out sewing right up till the moment I had to put all my stuff in a van and move out of the studio! 

ArtKeeper is a unique residency nationally in that it places artists on the payroll of a large arts institution to develop new work. How did being an employee creating your own work change what you created or how you did it?

The reality of being an artist (note that here I’m specifically speaking as a visual artist) is that much of the work we make is shaped by external forces, including: the amount of time, space and materials artists have access to when making work, thematic expectations related to specific exhibition outcomes, the physical limitations of exhibition spaces, eligibility requirements of art awards and funding bodies, or the negotiations at play when artists are commissioned to make original work by patrons, just to name a few. ArtKeeper – a paid residency that provides artists with studio space and a significant chunk of time to work on a project defined by their own vision and goals – provides a liberating relief from these pressures.

For me, undertaking the ArtKeeper residency meant I was able to be experimental and ambitious with my ideas, that I could explore challenging subject matter and that I could brave making work at a much larger in scale in comparison with anything I’ve tackled to date. Without the space and resources this residency provided I wouldn’t have been able to achieve this at this early-career stage of my development as an artist.

What’s next for the work, and for you?

The plan for the work is to do a test hang of the installation at HOTA in late September. During this time the artwork will be professionally documented and using this documentation I will then pitch the work to potential exhibitors from around Australia.

Between now and then, I will continue to sew smaller details into the work from my own studio space, which is so small in comparison to the ArtKeeper studio that I won’t be able to lay out the artwork and see it properly until it is installed!

My great hope for this work is that I can find a presenting partner who is willing to support the work to tour nationally so that audiences across the country can experience and contribute to it. Ideally, the work will eventually find a home in the collection of an institution that has a conservation team capable caring for a large-scale textile artwork.

Images & video by ArtKeeper Storyteller in residence Lachlan Woods.