Old / New at the museum of the Riverina in Wagga Wagga Susan wood

Those We Forget

Susan Wood, Those We Forget, 2020, Vintage wooden cupboard, Ten Books, mourning cloth and Funeral Flowers. Photographer James T Farley

Susan Wood, Those We Forget, 2020, Vintage wooden cupboard, Ten Books, mourning cloth and Funeral Flowers. Photographer James T Farley

Vintage wooden cupboard

Ten books – hand painted cover paper, bamboo paper pages, flag book structure, stencilled decorations, typewritten text extracted from contemporary newspaper reports

Mourning cloth – silk and linen, plant dyed and handstitched

Funeral flowers – glass and jet beads, wire, French beaded flower technique

Dimensions

Cupboard W 38cm, H 47cm, D 14cm

Books are each W 9cm, H 15cm, D 1.5cm

Cloth W 54cm, H 44cm

Flowers W20cm, H 10cm, D 10cm 

Artist statement

I love small town museums, which record our rural history. And I have long been fascinated by the question of what they include and what they leave out. The ‘Death and Mourning Room’ in the Broadway Museum tells stories of deaths from the past: the local member’s daughter, the heroic soldier, the notable businessman. But what of the stories that are missing from the museum? ‘Those we forget’ tells, in fragments, of Junee-related deaths we might prefer to forget. They are stories of human failings and pain: a reminder that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Old / New at the museum of the Riverina in Wagga Wagga Bev Moxon

In this work, I reconfigure the Willow Pattern’s narrative to detail Gundagai’s catastrophic flood of 1852. 

The tale of colonial hubris, loss and Wiradjuri heroism is hand-printed on painstakingly coiled cloth and embroidered to create a bowl as a gesture of remembrance.The boat of the willow pattern becomes the vessels of Wiradjuri men Jacky and Yarri, whose humanitarian rescue of 69 people immortalised them in local lore and our nation’s history. Willows becomes the River Red Gum whose upmost branches offered refuge from floodwaters, and the blue birds become sulphur-crested Cockatoos, calling high above the broken banks of the Murrumbidgee. 

  

 Beverly Moxon, A Vessel of Remembrance, 2020, 33cm, Circ 103.62cm Height 9cm, rope, screen-printed fabrics, damask tablecloth, threads, papier-mâché,  papier-mâché, screen-printing, coiling, embroidery, Boro darning /quilting stitches. Photo Bev Moxon

 Beverly Moxon, A Vessel of Remembrance, 2020, 33cm, Circ 103.62cm Height 9cm, rope, screen-printed fabrics, damask tablecloth, threads, papier-mâché,  papier-mâché, screen-printing, coiling, embroidery, Boro darning /quilting stitches. Photo Bev Moxon

 Beverly Moxon, A Vessel of Remembrance, 2020, 33cm, Circ 103.62cm Height 9cm, rope, screen-printed fabrics, damask tablecloth, threads, papier-mâché,  papier-mâché, screen-printing, coiling, embroidery, Boro darning /quilting stitches. Photo Bev Moxon

 Beverly Moxon, A Vessel of Remembrance, 2020, 33cm, Circ 103.62cm Height 9cm, rope, screen-printed fabrics, damask tablecloth, threads, papier-mâché,  papier-mâché, screen-printing, coiling, embroidery, Boro darning /quilting stitches. Photo Bev Moxon

Artist Statement

Museums house many objects from the past and

each has a story. Pieces of broken blue and white

china found embedded in the silt many years after

the great flood of 1852 have made their way into the

Gundagai Historical Museum. These tiny fragments

from the past as well as the Willow Pattern teacup,

saucer and plate with its accompanying oral history,

allow curators to piece together the meanings and

stories behind the objects.

The blue and white design of the willow pattern has

been an enduring motif for transfer ware since the

18th century. It is this pattern that is found on

English dinnerware to this day that inspires my new

work, ‘A Vessel of Remembrance’.

I have reconfigured the narrative of the historic

willow pattern to illustrate the story of the

Murrumbidgee River flood in 1852. That historic

event’s impact on old Gundagai became the

township’s own local legend.

As I stitched my bowl for this exhibition I imagined

the settlers on that fateful day sitting together for a

meal. Perhaps their table was set with a damask

cloth worn thin, patched and darned and their blue

and white crockery, chipped and crazed. Life was

hard in a strange, and unforgiving landscape.

Old Gundagai. a town built on the river flats

between river and creek, despite the warnings of

flooding by the Indigenous community, was about to

be held to account.

As the river began to rise, the Murrumbidgee broke

its banks and the water inundated the town. The

settlers took refuge on their rooftops. Still the water

rose and those who were capable clung to the

treetops as their houses were swept away.

Wiradjuri locals, Jacky and Yarri rescued 69 people

using simple bark canoes and plucking the settlers

one by one from the water.

In my reworked willow pattern design, the Gundagai

floods become the focus. I take some elements

from the traditional blue and white pattern and

substitute them with representations of Gundagai.

The willow tree becomes the River Red Gum in

which many took refuge from the flood. The fishing

boat becomes the bark canoe with which Jacky and

Yarri, rescued many settlers. The blue birds

become Sulphur Crested Cockatoos and the water

becomes the flooded Murrumbidgee.

On the inside of the bowl Gundagai motifs are

embroidered in blue on a white damask cloth, which

has been darned and patched to represent the

hardship of those early settlers.

On the outside of the bowl screen-printed fabric is

coiled and stitched with the traditional willow pattern

in blue and white.