Meet The New Quilt Artist: Brenda Gael Smith

 

Names of Artworks: Acuity #5: Zemblanity and Integrifolia #7: Emergence

Brenda Gael Smith's resonant textile works impart a sense of wonder of the natural world and a strong affinity to place. Abstraction is a persistent and insistent force in her creative practice as she captures the essence of her subjects. Her textile sketches and paintings are created in hand-dyed fabrics, complemented by intensive stitching demonstrating the transformative power of stitch.

Her works in The New Quilt are drawn from two different series. Integrifolia #7 Emergence is part of the Botanica series and explores the lenticular shapes of the banksia cone and themes of life and regeneration. The Acuity series focuses on the power of sight and the art of seeing. Zemblanity highlights the remarkable sensory membrane of the retina which contains millions of light sensitive photoreceptor cells that receive and organise visual information and send signals onto the brain for visual recognition. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has been challenging to process and requires constant recalibration of perceptions. Brenda embraces the serendipity factor in her creative practice, a happy counterpoint to the zemblanity of unrelenting pandemic metrics which bring unpleasant, non-surprises both socially and economically.

Brenda Gael Smith online: Webpage  Facebook  Instagram

Learn more about Brenda's two artworks in these videos on the new QuiltNSW YouTube channel. More videos will be posted online in the coming week. Be sure to subscribe so that you are notified as more videos are available.

The New Quilt, on exhibition at Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, Windsor, NSW from 5 February – 11 April 2021. 

Gallery hours: Open 6 days a week Monday, Wednesday-Friday 10am-4pm Saturday-Sunday 10am-3pm. Closed on Tuesday and public holidays.   

Meet The New Quilt Artist: Jill Rumble

Name of Artwork: Landlines - Shadows II

Jill’s work has always been influenced by being raised in the country. She finds that the patterns of the shifting shadows found in our landscape help to form the designs and selection of materials.

This piece is about memories from childhood and a farming upbringing. Eco dyeing with eucalyptus leaves and onion skins as well as leaf printing help to connect it to country. Machine and hand stitching and raw edges bring texture and wonderment to the piece … bringing it to life.

Marks in our landscape are left by humans, animals and nature ……. sometimes conflicting, but more often beautiful.

The New Quilt, on exhibition at Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, Windsor, NSW from 5 February – 11 April 2021. 

Gallery hours: Open 6 days a week Monday, Wednesday-Friday 10am-4pm Saturday-Sunday 10am-3pm. Closed on Tuesday and public holidays.   

Meet The New Quilt Artist: Sue Reid

Name of Artwork: Abandonment#2

Sue Reid can remember sewing from a very early age, hand sewing dolls clothes and then progressing to making her own clothes as a teenager on her mother’s sewing machine. Sue also liked to draw and painted abstracts.

Sue was a mathematics teacher and on retiring took a course to make a traditional sampler quilt so that she could learn the many facets of quilt making. She also took workshops with Gabriella Verstraeten on free form machine embroidery, so that she could master her machine and make it talk for her. Sue discovered that she preferred to create quilts with hand painting and appliquéing before adding machine embroidery and machine quilting.

Colour, shape and stitch are the inspiration for Sue in creating her contemporary art quilts. The love of the colour orange is very evident as well as her penchant for pattern. Free motion quilting is another love as it changes a good piece into an amazing quilt in her eyes..

Sue finds the most difficult part in her creative process is the initial idea, and often spends hours mulling over ideas. She rarely produces samples, but is more spontaneous and just goes for it, not always successfully, but many great ideas have come from mistakes. It is not unusual for her to create four or five of the same quilt in order “to get it right “.

There is always a meaning behind each quilt that Sue makes, and she feels that the title is very important, so she jots down her thoughts in a journal. Sue loves making her contemporary art quilts.

Sue Reid online: Instagram  

The New Quilt, on exhibition at Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, Windsor, NSW from 5 February – 11 April 2021. 

Gallery hours: Open 6 days a week Monday, Wednesday-Friday 10am-4pm Saturday-Sunday 10am-3pm. Closed on Tuesday and public holidays.   

Meet The New Quilt Artists: Beth and Trevor Reid

Name of artwork: Corundum

Beth and Trevor have lived in Canberra for the past thirty eight years, but both grew up in Melbourne and surrounds. They have always had an interest in textiles, both having sewn and collected fabrics when young.

They made their first quilt together in 1972, but it was not until 1988 that patchwork and quilting came back into their frame of reference.

Beth and Trevor joined Canberra Quilters, made a sampler quilt and then began to experiment with different techniques, from there they went on to make quilts that were a little bit different, sometimes together, sometimes individually. Beth and Trevor began to collaborate seriously in 1998 for a Canberra exhibition ‘Classy Clobber’, where a number of diverse textile artists including felters and weavers were asked to produce a version of an Australian stockman’s coat in their particular medium. They still enjoy the process. They design together workshopping ideas, with Trevor taking the lead on painting, drawing and cutting and Beth with assembly, stitch embellishment and quilting.

They have exhibited nationally and internationally and are represented in international and Australian private collections. Work in public collections includes the ACT Hospice, Parliament House Art Collection, the ACT Government Library Service and the ACT Heritage Library. Beth and Trevor won Best of Show at the Canberra Quilters Exhibition in 2009 and again in 2018. 

Their interest in recycled denim came about because of their son. He had a love of wearing baggy fashionable jeans as a teenager and was reluctant to dispose of his favourite pairs as he outgrew them, thinking perhaps there would be a quilt in his future. With their wide fashionable legs, there was so much useful material and the colour was so varied, their feel so soft and velvety, that they were stored in a basket tucked away awaiting the right opportunity.

Beth and Trevor continue to enjoy working collaboratively gathering inspiration from many different areas, including the natural environment. It is a collaboration of 30 plus years and still counting.

Beth and Trevor Reid online: Instagram  

The New Quilt, on exhibition at Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, Windsor, NSW from 5 February – 11 April 2021. 

Gallery hours: Open 6 days a week Monday, Wednesday-Friday 10am-4pm Saturday-Sunday 10am-3pm. Closed on Tuesday and public holidays.   

Meet The New Quilt Artist: Hilary Peterson

Name of Artwork: Standing Tree

Born in Singapore, Hilary grew up in Sydney, Australia. She travelled extensively in Europe, Asia, USA and Mexico and more recently in Japan, moving to the Bega Valley in NSW 33 years ago.

Her love of nature was evident as a child, spending endless hours at the local creek, in the bush and in and on the water of the northern beaches area of Sydney. Initially trained as a commercial textile designer, working in Sydney and London, designing carpets, commercially printed fashion fabrics, furnishings and wallpapers. She completed a Master of Visual Arts degree in 2002. Research areas of interest involved landscape, the natural world, inter-connectivity/interdependence and place. This research continues to underpin her work.

Hilary works in many media including painting, drawing, printing, dyeing, stitching and felting, combining them in many works. Natural dyeing, used in most of her textile work, attaches it to place and fixes it in time. Journeying through a place Hilary’s work investigates fragility and ephemeral beauty, an unconscious memorising of particular aspects of the landscape that later resurface into consciousness. Her love of colour and texture are reflected in the rich surfaces of my work.

Teaching skills to others has been an enjoyable part of Hilary’s life since 1994. She has taught children and adults privately and through TAFE NSW, at Textile Fibre Forum in Geelong, Orange and in the Blue Mountains, Fibres Ballarat and Quilt Encounter in Adelaide.

Hilary Peterson online: Webpage  

The New Quilt, on exhibition at Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, Windsor, NSW from 5 February – 11 April 2021. 

Gallery hours: Open 6 days a week Monday, Wednesday-Friday 10am-4pm Saturday-Sunday 10am-3pm. Closed on Tuesday and public holidays.   

Meet The New Quilt Artist: Lorraine Parker

Name of Artwork: Rust and Decay

Lorraine’s background and training is in education. She also has a degree in Behavioural Science. She started her professional career as a high school teacher in what is now called Technology and Applied Studies. Textiles and Design was part of this and an area that she loved with a passion. A goal in her teaching was to facilitate creativity and innovation in others, to inspire confidence and a willingness to experiment with colour, texture, materials and techniques.

Her path led to lecturing and tutoring in Textile Innovation at the Australian Catholic University. This was followed by contracts to write the Textile Design and Textiles Science and Innovation units for Southern Cross University teacher training.

This included tutoring many workshops with SCU students. She has also tutored for ATASDA, NCEATA, regional quilting groups and The ASG National Convention.

Her creative yen has been fed by her love of nature, travel and photography. Her work has been published in Down Under Textiles and American Patchwork and Quilting.

Exhibitions of her work include Timeless Textiles Newcastle, The Rainforest Centre Dorrigo, Coffs Harbour’s Bunker Gallery, Woolgoolga’s Art Gallery and Macleay Valley Arts Council at Gladstone (NSW). Whenever a piece of her work sold she has a sense of joy as well as loss.

She is a qualified Quilt Judging Course for the Quilters’ Guild of the British Isles.

Lorraine Parker online: Webpage  Facebook  

 

The New Quilt, on exhibition at Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, Windsor, NSW from 5 February – 11 April 2021. 

Gallery hours: Open 6 days a week Monday, Wednesday-Friday 10am-4pm Saturday-Sunday 10am-3pm. Closed on Tuesday and public holidays.   

Meet The New Quilt Artist: Judi Nikoleski

Names of Artworks: Habitat Drift 1,2&3 (triptych) and Restless Fiery Night

Judi immersed herself in the making of creative textiles after a career change from an extensive period working in publication and internet design. She had always loved working with fabric and sewing as a creative interest and the change was a natural progression. She built upon a solid foundation in graphic design and illustration by attending multiple courses in creative textiles. This was the impetus for her many series of unique art textiles which incorporate felting, dye painting, printing, silk screening, quilting and many other textile techniques.

Since 2007 Judi's creative art quilts have been exhibited in twenty five group shows in NSW, Victoria and the USA, including two juried shows at the Manly Art Gallery NSW and two solo shows at Timeless Textiles Newcastle. Her work has received multiple awards for surface design, creative use of pigments and dyes and textile portraiture. Two of Judi's art quilts have won the Best of Show Acquisitive award at the Australian Cotton Fibre Expo. Many of her wall hangings have been purchased by private individuals. She works from her studio in Charlestown NSW.

Judi Nikoleski online: Webpage        

The New Quilt, on exhibition at Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, Windsor, NSW from 5 February – 11 April 2021. 

Gallery hours: Open 6 days a week Monday, Wednesday-Friday 10am-4pm Saturday-Sunday 10am-3pm. Closed on Tuesday and public holidays.   

Meet The New Quilt Artist: Alison Muir

Names of Artworks: Comfort and Feeding the aquifer 

Water is the driving force in Muir’s world. She had developed an individual style using layered 'vliesofixed' strips of cloth in the early 2000’s. 

The thesis and accompanying exhibition 'Fathoming the depths: informative textiles' presented social & environmental issues: the politics of water and an MDes (Hons) was awarded in 2010, using experimental works, questioning the audience about the messages in the textile and remaking new works for the 4 out of 12 messages which were not clear.

For the last 10 years, Muir has experimented with natural dyes and mordants, using indigo and Australian flora as the source material. Exhibitions include Quilt National 2011 and 2019 in USA, Australia Wide travelling exhibitions, Art Quilt Australia since inception and various International textile exhibitions in Europe, USA and Australia.

Muir starts with a 'water message' and the design is generated using appropriate research, techniques, colours and stitching with unconnected traditions such as dyed textiles and political comment, scientific details and text in natural dyed textile landscapes/seascapes.

All deliver messages, sometimes political and always passionate about our water environment

Alison Muir online: Website  Instagram  

The New Quilt, on exhibition at Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, Windsor, NSW from 5 February – 11 April 2021. 

Gallery hours: Open 6 days a week Monday, Wednesday-Friday 10am-4pm Saturday-Sunday 10am-3pm. Closed on Tuesday and public holidays.          

 

Meet The New Quilt Artist: Jill Miglietti

Name of Artwork: Memory Crosscut

Jill Miglietti is an artist with a long-established practice in contemporary fibre and textiles. She holds a Diploma of Textile Art and her work is held in public and private collections. Working from the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, she translates memories and environments from her encounters with diverse locations.

Working in two- and three-dimensional modes, from layered, textured surfaces to soft sculptural forms, Jill Miglietti is concerned with psychogeography. Thematically and materially, her practice explores the many interactions between the environment and our formations of identity and memory. From slow observation and detailed recording, natural colours, textures and forms are all abstracted in the process of mapping personal experiences and narratives of specific places. Highlighting the difference between just being in a place and properly dwelling in it, her work is at once personal and universal, evoking familiarity and sparking a return, of sorts, to those treasured places where the spirit rests, the heart slows and the senses sharpen.

Jill Miglietti online: Website  Facebook  Instagram

The New Quilt, on exhibition at Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, Windsor, NSW from 5 February – 11 April 2021. 

Gallery hours: Open 6 days a week Monday, Wednesday-Friday 10am-4pm Saturday-Sunday 10am-3pm. Closed on Tuesday and public holidays.          

Meet The New Quilt Artist: Irene Koroluk

Names of Artworks: Death in Paradise, Incineration

Irene Koroluk is a Tasmanian artist whose practice draws on her connections with the natural environment. Through her work, she aims to capture and reveal beauty and diversity in the landscape. Drawing on her imagination, memory and personal experiences from her travels and explorations, Irene captures both stillness and movement through detailed and layered interpretations of the places she encounters.

Primarily working in textiles, Irene creates tactile and detailed art quilts, often using mixed media in her compositions. Her practice also encompasses drawing, print making, photography and painting.

Interested in the fragility and and transitory nature of the landscape, her work aims to instil the value and importance of appreciating and protecting natural habitats, highlighting the places and species that touch and replenish her soul.

Irene Koroluk online: Website

The New Quilt, on exhibition at Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, Windsor, NSW from 5 February – 11 April 2021. 

Gallery hours: Open 6 days a week Monday, Wednesday-Friday 10am-4pm Saturday-Sunday 10am-3pm. Closed on Tuesday and public holidays.

Meet The New Quilt Artist: Judy Hooworth

Name of Artwork: Creek Drawing #17

Since moving to the Lake Macquarie area in 2003, Judy’s work has been influenced and inspired by Dora Creek which flows near her home. During walks along its banks she has recorded her impressions with photographs, notes and drawings. She is interested in the patterns created by the movement of light on water and the colours and moods created by changes in the weather day by day. She is passionate about the preservation of the creek and its natural surrounds.

Judy’s quilts have been featured in books and magazines here and overseas and she has exhibited widely throughout Australia, USA, UK, Asia and Europe in solo and group exhibitions. She has won many awards and is represented in public and private collections in Australia, USA and UK, including the Powerhouse Museum, Tamworth Art Gallery, Wangaratta Art Gallery, Central Goldfields Art Gallery, Stanthorpe Art Gallery, Deakin Australia, San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles USA, and the Museum of Arts and Design NY, USA.

Judy Hooworth online: Facebook  Instagram

The New Quilt, on exhibition at Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, Windsor, NSW from 5 February – 11 April 2021. 

Gallery hours: Open 6 days a week Monday, Wednesday-Friday 10am-4pm Saturday-Sunday 10am-3pm. Closed on Tuesday and public holidays.

Meet The New Quilt Artist: Bronwyn Hill

Name of Artwork: Lyre Lyre

Bronwyn Hill has been quilting for more than 30 years, the past 15 years focussing on art quilts and experimentation in this field.

Having a background in dress making/clothes design the artist uses many varied and non-traditional quilting fabrics to create desired texture and colour. Bronwyn uses chiffon, netting, silk, linen, velvet and even glitter fabric to create her whimsical creations.

Working with raw edge applique, free motion thread painting and textile pencils the artist has the freedom to create what is in her mind into unique pieces of textile art.

Bronwyn draws inspiration from just about anywhere, nature, life experiences, travel and her imagination.

Bronwyn Hill online: Instagram 

The New Quilt, on exhibition at Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, Windsor, NSW from 5 February – 11 April 2021. 

Gallery hours: Open 6 days a week Monday, Wednesday-Friday 10am-4pm Saturday-Sunday 10am-3pm. Closed on Tuesday and public holidays.

Meet The New Quilt Artist: Neroli Henderson

Name of Artwork: Whitewash 2020

Neroli Henderson is an internationally award-winning artist based in St Kilda, Victoria. Her works often form pointed social and/or political commentary and this has gained her a reputation as an "artivist". A former graphic designer Neroli uses a range of media and techniques in her art, including photography, digital printing, collage, painting/drawing and other surface manipulation, almost always incorporating stitch as an integral component for both texture and line. Her Whitewash series explore the illusion of serenity when the reality is anything but, and like many of her works explores a lack of control in the world around us.

This piece was created during the hard lock down in Melbourne, when residents could only leave their home for up to an hour a day for exercise or for essential food or medical treatment. Yet while this harsh mandate was in place with up to 750 cases a day of Covid-19 being reported, a glance out the window revealed a city quiet and still, seemingly at peace.

Neroli Henderson online: Facebook  Instagram

The New Quilt, on exhibition at Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, Windsor, NSW from 5 February – 11 April 2021. 

Gallery hours: Open 6 days a week Monday, Wednesday-Friday 10am-4pm Saturday-Sunday 10am-3pm. Closed on Tuesday and public holidays.

Meet The New Quilt Artist: Lynne Hargreaves

 

Name of Artworks: Topography #1 Tailings, Topography#3 Sunrise

Born in the UK Lynne worked as a graphic designer moving into design training in 1978. Twenty years in vocational and tertiary education followed. Joining the cultural sector and arts management in 1998, she retired to Tasmania in 2017 from the position of Director of Exhibitions & Collections at the Art Gallery of WA. She has worked in partnership with institutions such as the Louvre, Tate, V&A, St Petersburg State Theatre and most recently the MoMA, NY to present renowned artworks in Perth. Entering a new chapter of her career she now has a focus on her own textile practice.

Art quilting draws upon her design background and she is excitedly discovering the wonders of thread and fabric. Like many she is often inspired by the patterns and micro landscapes found in nature, in the hedgerows, on tree barks, lichens and amongst the frosty leaf litter of autumn. There is also an autobiographical side to her work. The ‘lass from Leeds’ is usually not far away in the dry Yorkshire humour and commentary on her own life experiences. She is currently embarking on her personal nod at the ‘Bayeux Tapestry’ a 15 m embroidery based on behind the scenes life at the Art Gallery of Western Australia.

Her recent focus is working with the linear qualities of the landscape and the macro aerial viewpoint. Not direct depictions they capture and impressions and memories as abstracted elements reimagined with fabric and stitch. The work displayed features experiments with hand dyed fabric over worked with double needle, free motion machine stitching and hand work. Areas are highlighted and worked with appliqued fabrics, trapunto, couched thread and chenille slashing.

The New Quilt, on exhibition at Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, Windsor, NSW from 5 February – 11 April 2021. 

Gallery hours: Open 6 days a week Monday, Wednesday-Friday 10am-4pm Saturday-Sunday 10am-3pm. Closed on Tuesday and public holidays.

Meet The New Quilt Artist: Julie Haddrick

Name of Artwork: Blue Specimen

Julie Haddrick’s art tells the stories, expresses her feelings and it is the driving force in her life. Art comes from a deeper place inside her and central to this is expression that is grounded in naturalism. With a love of fabric and stitch, Julie’s arts practice is underpinned by the Fine Arts; of drawing painting and printmaking and the disciplines of Design and the Crafts of textiles have shaped the ways she uses stitch, threads, colours and cloth. They are disciplined, sparse, refined and without elaboration.

Julie embraces the Japanese aesthetic of “Wabi Sabi’” that values transience, imperfection and the impermanent. She finds greatness in the overlooked details; the grace of ageing, imperfection and of beauty in decline. Julies’ Wabi Sabi is outdoors in quiet, insignificant and inwardly oriented places and her treasure is in the discarded; a feather, a stick, a shard of china. She hand dyes, prints and paints fabrics, often combining/ layering them with vintage cloth or recycled Japanese silk fabric. Studying indigo dyeing techniques in Japan under Bryan Whitehead’s tuition has greatly influenced the fabrics Julie works with and is this is pertinent to her current quilt ‘Blue Specimen’. 

Her stitching is measured, decorative and purposeful and her thread rich textiles are complex and quite unique, with layers of meaning concealed in her beautiful machine quilting. Julie believes that her Art is about making space – both physical and mental – for listening, searching, and expressing one’s unique position in the world. Art cultivates the ability to imagine a future and so transcends the present moment. Julie Haddrick’s art is inherently hopeful

Julie Haddrick online: Webpage  Facebook 

The New Quilt, on exhibition at Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, Windsor, NSW from 5 February – 11 April 2021. 

Gallery hours: Open 6 days a week Monday, Wednesday-Friday 10am-4pm Saturday-Sunday 10am-3pm. Closed on Tuesday and public holidays.

 

Meet The New Quilt Artist: Helen Gray

Name of Artwork: Mollymook Summer

The south coast of N.S.W is where Helen spends much of the year. She is an ocean swimmer and delights in the ever changing environment. 2020's bushfires left blackened leaves tumbling in the breaking waves and washed up on the shore, inspiring her to create work referencing this unusual time. Hand stitching in isolation became an enjoyable daily ritual.

The New Quilt, on exhibition at Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, Windsor, NSW from 5 February – 11 April 2021. 

Gallery hours: Open 6 days a week Monday, Wednesday-Friday 10am-4pm Saturday-Sunday 10am-3pm. Closed on Tuesday and public holidays.

Meet The New Quilt Artist: Barbara Gower

 

Name of Artwork: Black Summer

Barbara has sewn for as long as she can remember, joining the women in her extended family as dressmakers, embroiderers and quilters. Her first English piecing in 1975 was taught by her mother. One aunt, a professional dressmaker, allowed her as a child to play in her scraps from bridal and evening gowns. So began her love of silks.

Barbara attended the first Sydney Quilt show and joined the guild soon after, which gave her the opportunity to attend many workshops and develop new skills. She has exhibited in most exhibitions since 1991.

Completing the TAFE Commercial Needlework Course in 1995, joining the Southern Highlands Textile Fibre Network and then the Macarthur Textile Network encouraged her to become more creative.

Barbara became interested in quilts for public places when involved in the construction of the Cowpastures Heritage Quilt for Camden Council in 1995. Since then she has been involved in many community projects including the mammoth task of creating the Carrington Quilts with five others, for a new facility at Carrington Care, Camden.

Barbara used her skills as a trained school teacher to teach patchwork, quilting, embroidery and textile art for groups, shops, evening colleges and privately for many years.

Her interest in Japanese textiles began as a teenager when her father gave her mother a kimono from Japan. This has developed over the years into a collection of vintage kimono textiles, particularly Meisen silks which she is using to extend their life. Often this means mending in the Boro style. She happily mixes machine and hand techniques and incorporates papers in many works. Barbara also creates work using the Korean Bojagi technique.

Inspiration for work comes from her natural surroundings, particularly trees and seasonal changes in her large country garden. Often the fabrics themselves inspire ideas.

The New Quilt, on exhibition at Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, Windsor, NSW from 5 February – 11 April 2021. 

Gallery hours: Open 6 days a week Monday, Wednesday-Friday 10am-4pm Saturday-Sunday 10am-3pm. Closed on Tuesday and public holidays.

 

Meet The New Quilt Artist: Margery Goodall

Name of Artwork: Beating the Blues

Margery Goodall works with stitched textiles and mixed media. She is inspired by the natural world and her urban environment. In 2020, she worked exclusively with found materials and waste.

Her work is held in private collections in Australia and overseas, and in the collection of the International Quilt Museum in USA. 

Most recently, her work was exhibited in Hanging by a Thread at the Holmes a Court gallery @ No10 and she was a finalist in the York Botanic Art Prize 2020 which selected work by artists in all Australian states.

She has convened juried textile exhibitions, open to both Australian and international artists in Tasmania, Victoria, and the ACT, while in WA she was convenor of the stitched and bound 2003 exhibition at Fremantle Art Centre. In 2020, she was joint-curator for selecting artworks for the Marjorie Coleman-Lyrical Stitch solo retrospective exhibition that exhibited at the Holmes a Court gallery @ No10 from 17 October to 28 November 2020.

The New Quilt, on exhibition at Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, Windsor, NSW from 5 February – 11 April 2021. 

Gallery hours: Open 6 days a week Monday, Wednesday-Friday 10am-4pm Saturday-Sunday 10am-3pm. Closed on Tuesday and public holidays.

Meet The New Quilt Artist: Fiona Gavens

Name of Artwork: Picnic Rug

Fiona Gavens is a textile designer based in Melbourne.  She has broad experience developed over a lifetime of involvement with textiles, particularly patchwork, quilting, embroidery, knitting and dressmaking. 

Her multiple careers include being a freelance quilt artist, exhibitor and teacher for many years; manager of a regional conservatorium; and university and arts administrator. As a self-taught artist she embraced the opportunity to develop formal design skills in her studies of B.A. (Textile Design), RMIT University, graduating in 2018.

Fiona is a “hands-on designer”, developing the work through the construction process. Graphic shapes, bold colour and texture have always featured strongly, whatever the medium. The Japanese concept of wabi-sabi has been a strong influence, and led to Fiona developing “systems for randomness”.

In Picnic Rug Fiona deconstructs woven checked rugs, then reimagines them to create a pieced quilt.  The "textured" construction enhances the play of light on the silk. 

Fiona Gavens online:  Instagram

The New Quilt, on exhibition at Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, Windsor, NSW from 5 February – 11 April 2021. 

Gallery hours: Open 6 days a week Monday, Wednesday-Friday 10am-4pm Saturday-Sunday 10am-3pm. Closed on Tuesday and public holidays.