Soft Actions (2)
3 December 2022 at 2:00:00 am
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Session Convenors
Dr Boni Cairncross, University of Wollongong
Session Speakers
Dr Boni Cairncross, University of Wollongong
Dr Deborah Eddy
Samantha Lang, The University of Wollongong
Dr Linda Erceg, University of Tasmania
Historically, craft as often been positioned as ‘other’ to art. In Modernist thought, craft practices, such as textiles, were framed as too conservative, uncritical and embedded in daily life to be the ‘stuff’ of visual arts. In recent years, there has been a revaluing of craft practices. The processes and materials associated with craft have been employed by artists and designers as critical sites for discussion, advocacy, activism and protest. These actions are wide-ranging: from collective making spaces, to projects that seek to open conversations and debates, to artworks that employ craft to interrogate intersecting or overlooked histories, to craft-as-protest. In these creative strategies, the familiarity, the ‘softness’, and embodied knowledges of the craft processes are powerful devices that are drawn on and utilised by creative practitioners.
Living in the Plasticene
Dr Linda Erceg, University of Tasmania
This paper will present a survey of exhibited installation works in which recycled plastics are used to explore the beauty and logic of organic forms. Using a range of traditional stitching techniques, my plastic materials are transformed to create interconnected sculptural elements. The material properties of plastic are revealed as a source of wonder and delight, as well as a dangerous threat when left unchecked to create these hybrid feral growths. My installations allow the viewer to experience an intimate and evocative encounter with plastics, while also questioning the ways in this material passes through our daily lives. Acting as conduits for complex problems, I use the soft logics of textiles to create connective structures and mesh-works. Simultaneously provoking feelings of containment and entrapment, support and invasion, my plastic ecologies reveal the inherent tensions resulting from the durability and disposability of plastics. Incorporating bioplastics into new forms, I see hope through the possibilities of environmental resilience and adaptation. My work is an invitation to not give up, but rather as Donna Haraway (2016) suggests, to ‘stay with the trouble’ and to use this moment in time to acknowledge connection and become invested and responsive to the more than human world.
Sick Planet Theory: A Crip Manifesto for an Imagined World
Samantha Lang, The University of Wollongong
When studying the language used to address the results of planetary, environmental damage in the era of the Anthropocene, over and over the planet is described as being sickly, ailing and ill. These wordings function to funnel environmental concerns directly into the domain of medicine, and link illness and disability to negative environmental outcomes. Taking inspiration from crip theory frameworks that centre non-normative bodies/minds, and utilising a crip counternarrative, Sick Planet Theory provides a foundation for exploring new ways to reflect upon the histories of environmental art. Sick Planet Theory examines the reliance on metaphors of sickness, illness and disability as the unquestioned markers of tragic environmental outcomes. I ask, what does it mean to create art that reflects the deeply complicated and uncomfortable unravelling of sickness, illness and vulnerability at a time when the very planet we set our sickbeds upon is itself increasingly referred to as unwell, ill and sickly? Investigating the connections between environmental art, sick bodies and textile practice provides fertile ground for forcing a dialogue with environmentalism and works of environmental art. By establishing illness, sickness and crip-ness as power places in environmental art discourses, Sick Planet Theory proposes a crip worldmaking framework that identifies oppressive structures in environmental art, legitimises crip artmaking practices, and establishes how the lived, sick experience can redefine vulnerability in the Anthropocene.
Handmade costumes - using the craft of sewing to make costumes for performance
Dr Deborah Eddy
A popular consideration of craft as activism encapsulates embroidery often in the style of a meme or knitting for example, Kate Just and the Knitting Nannas. I propose that the stitching of costumes to be worn in feminist performances is an untapped area of research. I am an artist who uses craft and performance to speak of issues such as domestic violence, inequality of women and the invisibility of ageing women. While there has been considerable theoretical writing about performance art, Professor Anne Marsh is an excellent exemplar, my presentation will speak of those artists who use costuming as an important element of their performance. The clothing we wear day to day is both functional and provides keys to who we are. By extension the use of clothing in performance art allows the performer to communicate in a non-linguistic method. For example, performance artists, Chicks on Speed and Barbara Cleveland. The crafting of the costumes adds to the non-linguistic communication. They could be exquisitely made or show the hand of the maker. My costumes are purposefully clearly handmade and speak to topics that I am commenting on. My costumes are “craft-as-protest” or acts of craftivism.
Biographies
Dr Boni Cairncross, University of Wollongong
Boni Cairncross is a visual artist and academic currently based on Dharawal Country / Kiama, NSW. Her research and art practice is an exploration of time: slow stitching, durational performance, and time-based processes that reveal the trace of the artist’s body. Underpinning this is an interest in the multisensory frameworks that shape the social and political understandings of materials and the ways in which we encounter them. She has presented exhibitions and performances widely throughout Australia. In 2019, she was artist-in residence at the Australian Archaeological Institute of Athens. She is currently a lecturer in Visual Arts at the University of Wollongong, Australia.
Dr Linda Erceg, University of Tasmania
Linda Erceg is a multidisciplinary artist and lecturer at the School of Creative Arts and Media at the University of Tasmania in Hobart. Her artworks transform recycled plastics into immersive sculptural installations that reference organic forms and structures. Recognising the growing impact of plastics in this new epoch of the Anthropocene, her works present a thriving artificial ecosystem that mimics the processes of natural systems. Her studio processes utilise stitching techniques such as crochet, knitting and knotting, to create works that respond to the spaces they occupy. Erceg has received support from the Australia Council, Arts Victoria and Arts Tasmania.
Samantha Lang, The University of Wollongong
Samantha Lang is a queer, disabled artist living with multiple chronic illnesses. She is currently a Master's of Philosophy (MPhil) Candidate at The University of Wollongong, Australia. Lang’s latest project, Sick Planet Theory: A Crip Manifesto for an Imagined Future, explores the use of metaphors of disability and illness in environmentalism and the environmental arts, to challenge the pervasive narrative that casts illness, sickness and disability as signifiers of undesirable planetary outcomes in environmental art, theory and practice. As a chronically ill, disabled artist, Lang works with and within the limitations of time, materials and health. Lang’s weavings are woven by hand on free-standing frame and portable lap looms. Her crocheted and woven forms are comprised solely of reclaimed and deconstructed garments, recycled yarns and other materials, all sourced from local second-hand stores and personal donations.
Dr Deborah Eddy
Dr Deborah Eddy is a feminist artist and researcher who works in the field of sculpture and performance. Dr Eddy was conferred in April 2022 at the age of sixty-eight. She studied at Queensland College of Art achieving a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2016 and was awarded a Bachelor of Arts 1st class Honours and the University Medal for Excellence in 2017. She attended the Feminist Art Collective Residency in Toronto in 2018. She presented at the Lilith Symposium in 2019, the Activism @ the Margins Conference in February 2020 and the Australian Humour Studies Network Conference in 2022.