Louise Meuwissen — 'All the Treasure Together (Pins and Paint)', 2022

Louise Meuwissen's All the Treasure Together is a sparkling sculptural
shroud of retired antique, vintage, and new costume jewellery from the
collection of the iconic Rose Chong Costume Shop, and the generous
donations of the wider community. Delicately held together with safety
pins, these treasures - and trashes - are suspended upon a DIY clothing
rack salvaged from the artists favoured and frequented teen op-shop upon
it's closing, which throughout her twenties housed her collected vintage and
second-hand wardrobe.

All the Treasure Together considers the embellishments and adornment of
costuming and dress as mechanisms to draw forth parts of ourselves that
may not always be visible or shared, to represent abstract concepts,
commune collectively with a broader theme, to disguise ourselves or
become someone else.

Costumes are a tool of transportation to peripheral realms. Other times,
other places, other selves.
Drawing on the rich history and rituals of dressing up, Meuwissen's garish,
glittering work asks us to consider the relationship between
personal-expression and escapism, and to question 'what is real, and what
is make-believe?'

This work was originally presented at and Rose Chong Costume's as part
of Craft Victoria's Craft Contemporary Festival 2022 and supported by the
City of Yarra through their Small Projects Grants 2022.

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Louise Meuwissen is an Australian textile artist, living and working on Wurundjeri country. Working with fabric, found material and embroidery she creates paintings, sculptures and wearable art. Meuwissen's work considers the complex individual and collective relationships we form with objects, how they come to embody meaning and value, and carry energy. Her work is informed by adornment and decoration, craft, and the fluxing of fashion - underpinned by discardure and collecting, and the interplay between labour and luxury. Her most recent bodies of work consider the unknowable and the invisible, informed by research investigating devotion, the Sublime, hoarding, storytelling and mythology.

Meuwissen has exhibited across Australia including Heide, Craft and Felt Space. She has completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Painting) (Printmaking) at the Victorian College of the Arts, 2013.

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Everyone’s heard of a dragon  

Curated by James Lemon and Bobby Corica

11 November  23 – 27 January 24 

Read about the exhibition

Material: All the Treasure Together (Pins and Paint), 2022
Retired costume jewellery from the collection of Rose Chong Costume Shop (base metals, plastic, diamante, rhinestone and paste) found and donated antique, vintage, and new costume and fine jewellery, (base metal, silver, gilt, brass garnet, pearls, glass, plastic, diamantes, rhinestones and paste, porcelain, glaze, enamel, shell, opal), safety pins, handmade vintage clothing rack salvaged from the Diamond Creek Op Shop (Austin Health) at the time of its forced closure c.2010, steel hardware

Dimensions: approx. 180 x 160 x 61cm