Networks Australia: Paris

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

The Cite International des Arts, Paris - Valerie Kirk

The residency provided me with a unique opportunity to disconnect from my commitments in Australia and immerse myself in the arts context of Paris. As an artist and tapestry weaver I wanted to visit museums/galleries/collections and respond in the studio. These experiences allowed me to deeply engage with traditional and contemporary art and tapestry and my specific research/practice interests.

As a basis for research and development of new works I explored The French Natural History Museum, Gallery of Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy, housing the largest public display of invertebrate fossils. This gave me an opportunity to source visual material to use in new drawing, collage and tapestry. My intension was not to reproduce what I saw but to use the collection as a starting point to highlight the intangibility of the distant past and our relationship with it so that we can understand our place in time, location and space. This work builds on my previous “Floating Fossils” series of drawings, collage, stitch and tapestry, stemming from work at the Age of Fishes Museum, Canowindra, NSW. It allows me to accelerate my practice through focussed application to research and studio work.

Valerie Kirk is a Scottish born artist and tapestry weaver who now lives in Australia. She explores ideas about moving between two countries, identity and place in the world in relation to location and the perspective of time. Her imagery is developed from looking at textiles, landscape and fossils evoking the long distant past.

https://www.valeriekirktapestry.com/