Caro Pattle — Lithic Plate, 2022

Handwoven using coil basketry techniques, Pattle's Lithic series reworks prehistoric stone-hewn vessels in lush blue velvet. Each vessel is slowly amassed via a time-intensive process of knotting velvet yarn to create a dense organic surface and structure. The resultant vessels joyfully muddle past forms and present material, honouring utilitarian objects at the expense of their usability. Pattle's work is centred on material culture, exploring how everyday objects may be the only signifier by which our lives can be decrypted after we are gone. The Lithic series imagines the future artefacts of our contemporary material culture as situated within an anthropocenic dissolution of the organic and inorganic, of nature and culture.

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Born 1985, Aotearoa (New Zealand). Naarm based since 2014. Caro Pattle's experimental object-based practice explores handcraft processes through a lens of contemporary materiality. She draws from a range of craft disciplines to create works that joyfully muddle organic/synthetic, past/present and functional/non-functional binaries. Pattle's practice is underpinned by ongoing research into material culture, animism, and speculative futures. Pattle graduated from a Bachelor of Textiles at RMIT in 2019 with a previous Bachelor of Fine Arts completed in 2009. The recipient of numerous travel grants and industry prizes, Pattle regularly exhibits and in 2023 will complete a large commissioned work for Melbourne Now in an NGV x Craft co-curation.

Material: stretch velvet, galvanised steel, plastic

Dimensions: approx. 12 x 41 x 41cm

Please note, works purchased as gifts will be made available for collection by December 20 for the gifting season, all others will remain on exhibition until January 21