Artists statement
I see my work with textiles as always a negotiation of both the poetic and the political. A medium often relegated to the realm of ‘craft’, I see working with wool as a subtly subversive methodology, and an opportunity to engage in socio-political critique. As a laborious yet cathartic craft, the delicately feminine familiarity and domestic warmth of my hand-sewn tapestries allows me to open up and question traditional notions of masculinity through the enactment of a highly personalized queer ritual. Furthermore, wool carries with it frontier pastoral associations of early colonial expansion, and it is in this context that the work Map, which is based on the ethnographic mapping of indigenous language groups, was envisioned.
Physical description
A rectangular wool needlepoint textile work that features a multi-coloured map of Australia on a black and white checkered background.