slip, sleeve, cover (l-r)  1995

silk, hair, wadding, satin, found clothing

66 x 42 cm, 18 x 55 cm, 106 x 156 cm

 

The work was made in response to a place I passed through daily on my commute over a period of about three or four months. A woman had made her home at one of the bus shelters at Railway Square on Broadway. It was when the seats were made of timber and the structures were more solid and offered better protection from the weather. The woman had set up a ‘space’ up at one end of what was then a long row of seating. She had bedding, and a bag and very little else.

I witnessed her enacting rituals around her space, for certainty, for reassurance. I pondered this often and began to see it as a practice or a mantra, as protection or prayer. She would put on her wig, arrange and straighten her bedding, put her shoes into the bag, place it under the seat. She would lie down and pull up the covers, staying there for only a few minutes, or sometimes longer.  Then she would rise, take off the wig, shake it out, and go over the ritual again, and again.

I thought about her every day. I was struck by her vulnerability, by her need to perform these acts. I thought about what it meant to locate a bed, a most intimate space in our life, in the one of the most public spaces in Sydney. I felt an overwhelming and tangible sense of dislocation in the thinking around this conundrum, and at the same time, I pondered my own move from Perth to Sydney.

It is interesting to hear discussions in the media now about the plight of older women and homelessness, though I imagine it has always been this way. There are certainly things in my life that I take for granted. My home, the roof over my head, my garden, my refuge, is not one of them.

The work was made as a dedication to her. I created my own ritual around this. I collected my hair, which was long at the time, after each wash, dried it and stored it for use as thread, dyed the silk with tea, and began the task of stitching squares to assemble into a quilt. I stitched a pillowcase. The satin sleeve came from a friend's discarded pile of clothes. It gave me the colour palette for the silk, and on the sleeve I embroidered her story.

Initially it was exhibited in a different format, with other objects - a bed, a photograph, gloves, and a sound piece. Over the years, I have moved between cities and houses, and discarded components of various artworks. In some ways, what remains of that original form is pared back and reflects where my practice sits overall. 

 

photo: Ian Hill

 

This exhibition, held at Ararat Regional Art Gallery, 2 April - 22 May 2016, surveyed twenty years of textile works.  Thanks to Arts NSW for an Artist Support Grant that assisted the presentation of these works.