Bev Moxon

Bev Moxon, Covet 2015

The Necklace 

Recently I came across a story written by a French 19th Century author, Guy de Maupassant called, ‘The Necklace’ and although the story is quite well known I had not read it until now. His tale was inspirational in motivating me to create a necklace for this exhibition. In this story a beautiful jewel necklace belonging to a friend was much desired by a young woman, Mathilde. 


Coveting and perception are the themes of the story and throughout the narrative the protagonist, Mathilde covets all that other people possess. She perceives others to have more than she and is so covetous of jewels, silks and furs that eventually she comes to a sorry finish. I won’t give the story’s ending away in case you haven’t read it, but I will put a link here so that you can read it for yourselves. 

http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/Neck.shtml 


It seems one of the most common weaknesses of human nature is to be covetous of the wealth of others and to perceive that they have more than ourselves. I have used very common objects found in nature to demonstrate how ‘all that is gold need not glitter’. Wealth is a matter of perception as is well illustrated when reading Guy de Maupassant’s tale. If we take the time to look there is a treasure trove to be found in nature. 
 

My necklace is still in the very early stages of designing but will eventually have a rabbit fur edging, cowrie shells, stones, small pieces of bone and other natural materials such as seeds and pods. Techniques employed are weaving, sewing and beading.

There are other layers of meaning within my work from the controversial use of fur as a decorative piece to adorn humans to the suggestions of natures objects, simple, common, yet beautiful and valued in their own right as Nature’ riches. 


I also allude to the historical use of shells as money. Shell money was used in America as well as Asia, Africa and Australia. The cowrie shell was the shell most often used as currency and in my work it becomes a signifier of wealth. 


It is ironic that Guy de Maupassant penned his own epitaph, which read,
“I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing.” 

Bev Moxon 

Monique van Nieuwland

Monique van Nieuwland ~ Contemporary weaving

Sturt Gallery - from 7 June to 19 July 2015

Exhibition Opening Sunday 7 June at 11am
To be opened by Meredith Hinchliffe, curator and writer 'Sound Vignettes' by Madeleine Cocolas FLOOR TALK by the artist at 2pm in the gallery

 Website

"Sea monsters show the world on the edge

‘Ocean Forest’ is a new exhibition of contemporary weaving by Monique van Nieuwland, featuring sound vignettes by Madeleine Cocolas, designed to challenge our thinking about the beauty of our ocean flora and the threats to this fragile environment created by the modern world.

References to mid 18 hundreds of Australian marine flora are used to create an ocean forest installation, consisting of damask woven panels suspended in mid space.  On the walls is a series of smaller Jacquard woven images. Some of these interpret the 1850-60’s W. H. Harvey  botanic drawings of marine flora and some reinterpret depictions of sea monsters from early world maps.

These monsters represent vortexes in the world’s oceans where much of the world’s plastic waste has been discovered to converge, forming large, menacing floating masses, submerged below the surface."

Network in Italy

 Image sent to Nancy Tingey From Matera Italy

Photographed and sent to me  by my brother’s partner Sue Leach. They were touring in southern Italy. ‘Took this in Matera yesterday…thought of you! It was one of many hangings from a handmade twig sculpture outside a pretty bar. Made from raffia…fruit nets gleaned from the sea shore…and white pebbles.’

Sharon Peoples

 Next installment:

Sharon Peoples, Golden Lungs 2015,  machine embroidery

Sharon Peoples, Diamond Lungs 2015,  machine embroidery

I directly made an embroidery working from my recent drawings and sketches just to see how they would go. Usually there is a slight 'lost in translation' between a drawing and the lace technique I use. disappointingly this did not happen. It was quite boring I felt. The diamond shape with lung insertions didn't express anything I was setting out to do.
 
I resorted to a familiar way of working -using the imagery of lungs. I have been working with these for the last few years but this seemed  a little easy in one sense. I changed threads to metal and, at last, I felt like I was getting somewhere. I think I was making things a little too complicated in one way - trying to fit in a lot of ideas when perhaps this was not necessary. Anyway for the moment I feel like a new path has opened up. 


I am also working on a very much larger piece, so have been resolving things between the two formats. I will keep you posted later on this work.

Ola Robertson

I have just come back from a week at Fibres Ballarat, doing a free machine embroidery workshop with Meredith Woolnough. We also had instruction on placing small embroidery pieces in resin.  The class had a really good atmosphere and every one enjoyed it, especially me. Here is my final piece which we had two days to complete and mount.