Emma Shepherd
Emma Shepherd — 'Split' Woven Textile, 2024
Broad shapes, restrained compositions and subtle hues combine to articulate a quiet body of work. This exhibition reflects the influence of the Bauhaus movement, with guiding principles including the unification of art and craft, material understanding, and geometric designs. These principles, along with repetition of motifs, of processes, and of historical patterns, inform the works. Weaving is an ancient craft, largely unchanged since pre-ceramic times. Despite its historical undervaluation, cloth intertwines the practical with the profound; chronicling stories and lives, providing shelter, protection, communication, all with immense artistic significance.
—
Flinders-based weaver Emma Shepherd practices one of the world's oldest crafts with a sensibility of an artist deeply embedded in her environment. Using yarns collected from all around the world allows Shepherd an opportunity to reflect on the deeper history of fibre, its role in human history and weaving's legacy as humanity's earliest algorithms in action. Thinking through the fabric, its strength and structure, as well as the ethos of Bauhaus textiles, Shepherd folds in colours resembling green foliage, the dark tones of tree trunks, the neutrals of the sand and the rock of her hometown, Flinders. Her work incorporates materials foraged from Shepherd's immediate surrounds, letting them shape the work in a gentle yet deliberate way.
—
Project Space
September 19 - November 9 2024
Material: banana fibre, linen
Dimensions: approx. 80 x 70cm
Please note when purchasing, exhibition works are to be collected when exhibition closes.