1.2 Festival of Lace - Gallery76

Transcript

Hey, I’m Aiden. And I’m Matt. This is Hung Up, coming to you from Sydney. Each week we’re going to go to a gallery and talk about what we see. When we talk about art it feels like there’s too much emphasis on getting it, but it’s more fun if we trust ourselves with the art and just hang out. This week we’re visiting Gallery 76 at

the Embroiderers Guild in Concord West for the Festival of Lace. Follow us at hungup.au on Instagram so you can see the pictures from this show.

What we all want, like, or if you’re making stuff or whatever you’re doing, is to have an audience of like non-experts. You want the guy on the street that doesn’t know anything about poems to like dig your poem. Once you allow that for yourself, it’s like, you know, this show, like it’s a really friendly show. Like the stuff itself is educating you. Yeah, it’s true. Like the objects themselves

are like plenty to go off without having done the reading. A hundred percent.

So I saw this. We’re just standing in front of it. It’s kind of like a small portrait of this woman, Kathy. She just did like some jeans and some kind of old school sneakers and a, what do you call that, kind of coat? A double-breasted coat. Yeah, she got some loop earrings and like short brown hair and her mouth is stretched open. Yeah, maybe a middle-aged woman. Yeah, a middle-aged woman, maybe 50.

But yeah, I saw this, you know, little gust of wind. Like it’s a super fine piece of lace that just sort of lifted her legs off against the wall. Yeah. But she’s also suspended, right? I just noticed that she’s just dangling. Yeah. Oh yeah, she’s on like puppet. Oh, like a puppet. She’s on puppet strings. Yeah, cool. Very fine puppet strings. I love the sneakers at the bottom. The sneakers and the shoes are fantastic.

Really beautifully, beautifully shaded. Like all the folds in the jeans are just really simply sort of, they’re kind of like cross-hatched in these little pools of shadow. I love it as like, because there’s a lot of lace like clothes, right? Like you use lace to make like beautiful clothes. Yeah, expensive clothes. But then this is like a lace representation of like crappy clothes, like jeans

in a jacket, like modern clothes. But it’s kind of cool. I got struck by the jeans as well. Like it’s such a fine like ode to a crappy pair of jeans rendered in this super fine lace. Yeah. Tiny, tiny. Like what is that? It’s like a little square. It’s like a mill by mill. There’s maybe like, yeah, three stitches per millimeter or something like that. Like maybe two. Yeah, it’s very finely sort of,

yeah, woven. And now Kathy is just like, anytime some wind comes by, she kind of dangles and floats. Just see, it says machine embroidery thread. So I suspect that this was assembled by a machine and then hand stitched for the details. It’s reworked by her. It’s like the bulk of the jeans. Oh, like my jeans, they were woven like a, you know, like a normal textile.

Mm-hmm. Really cool. Yeah, it’s great. The color is really nice as well. Yeah, I wonder how they did that. They’ve like dyed different segments of it and then sort of assembled them later on. It’s such a great portrait. Yeah, it’s really beautiful. Like of someone. Yeah. Look at the shadow her face is casting on the wall behind.

I want my friends to come and look at this stuff, but it may just be that I’m a nerd and I love how like, I don’t know, someone in the fucking 1800s spent like, you know, maybe four or five weeks on this little beautiful little pouch. I don’t even know if it’s, maybe it was meant to be used, but it was like, we’re going to a horse race today and I’m going to take my like, my pocket watch and like,

you know, I don’t know what you would put else in there, your little cigarette holder and then you tie it on, you know. Oh man, like I love this stuff. Yeah, you sure do. And like, some of them are super fucking beautiful. Yeah. Really. And like, for me, this is like, kind of harder to dig than you. Cause like, I just kind of get a little bit glazed over, especially when there’s like a lot of

over thing. Like I don’t do well in museums, like the extent of the collection. And I feel like I need a narrative or an emotional hook to get me invested in an image. So like, yeah, I’m, I’m the like hard to sell it to friend, but even amongst these historical works, like even now we’re just

standing across from some and I just kind of cast over and like catch a little thing. Like yeah, those Russian, um, Kremlin Christian kind of towers. Yeah. Russian Orthodox little church things. Yeah. Like the super fucking beautiful. Um, but yeah, so I mean, yeah, I guess like if I’m the hardest customer, like I totally dig it. Sure. There’s a division in a sense, as in they’re presented

differently. The historical work has these little like, uh, you know, placards with like date and time and location. And then the pieces are lettered, you know, so you can, so we have a different presentation, but we don’t have a fundamentally, like we don’t have a different room. Like this whole space is referred to as the gallery. Yeah. And we do have the historical stuff right next to

this contemporary stuff.

Okay. So here we’ve got the, like the, the non historical part of this exhibition, which is Maggie Hensel Brown for, uh, sort of, uh, we’re calling them descending like this. They’re kind of stepped down, these four works. Um, they’re all right next to this much more historical stuff,

but they’re being given a bit of a sort of special place in the gallery. They’re like popping off the wall and the works themselves are kind of popping again off of the, um, uh, gray backing board that they’re on. Yeah. So it’s all, it says silk threads, needle lace, and none of these are for sale. And yeah,

they’re very, they feel very contemporary. There’s obviously that contrast you’re talking about compared to this sort of, what do you call this? Yeah. This side, so yeah. It’s like a board with, you know, eight or nine pieces of historical lace work from 19th century sort of period. Yeah. And then over here, there’s like, it’s like a woman laying on her bed,

listening to an iPod and there’s like a bra on the bed and a laptop, you know, open. I love the way the keys of the laptop are rendered. Yeah. It’s like, there’s these tiny, like lace rectangles and the keys are these tiny, tiny little squares. Really lovingly rendered laptop. And then the bed sheets are pulled up to reveal this actually quite, quite historical looking pattern

underneath. It’s like these little filigrees, which itself has been very finely made, but these are small pieces. It’s like maybe the size of a Kindle or an iPad, this one. Yeah, exactly. It’s probably about as tall as my hand is. And it really invites you into this little comfortable zone. She’s like lying on a comfy looking bed, you know? Yeah. These big, like golden brown pillows.

Yeah. Yeah. I love the way everything’s kind of like, I don’t know, like layered and unfolding. And there’s so much kind of textural play. Like look at the, the way the pillows are, these like tiny, tiny threaded, repeating loops. Yeah. They look a little bit like sort of fractal patterns

on the pillow. And they’re two also decidedly different patterns on the pillows. Each pillow gets its own little pattern. Yeah. That’s beautiful. And see how the, um, the filling of this, these folds that she’s turned up on the, uh, uh, duvet, how they kind of push and pull in and out of

like a kind of regular grid. They’re all kind of being, I don’t know if they’re being pulled away or if she’s like made them sort of warp across the further along you go. I just love the idea. And it’s similar to like what we were saying about the Cathy portrait, like rendering, uh, you know, concrete materials rather than these sort of pattern stuff. It’s like the historical stuff is doing like rendering a bra

or a pillow or a pair of shorts. Like it’s such a cool kind of like effect on the way you’re seeing like a garment or some, you know, some real world object. Cause you’ve got like the texture of the object as you know it. And then you have this like incredible, you know, kind of unique

method of working that’s kind of playing into the, you know, materiality of the objects themselves. Yeah.

Um, so yeah, I, I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever seen any kind of like,

what do you like, you know, this kind of modern lacework, you know? No, no, me neither. This is, this is the first I’ve ever seen. I’m sure that I’m sure there’s lots of like this going on. Yeah. And, and she like, we read an interview with her before this and she, she has a lot to say about like, you know, following like people on Instagram and stuff doing this.

Yeah. But I mean, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s so clever and it’s, it’s, it’s really like really grabbed us. Can we skip ahead to this, like one in the end here and then talk about the middle two? I think so. Yeah. So this is the first one was quarantine self-portrait one, lying, scrolling, and then there’s two in between. And then the fourth is called quarantine self-portrait two, dreaming of the path.

And then the, the woman in this one’s got like, she’s like, like slouched back. I, when I do this at home, I call this going slug mode. Yeah. So I’m going full slug mode. She’s got like her arm draped over the back of the sofa. She’s like, or the side of the sofa. She’s got the laptop on her belly, like flipped up, her head kind of like craned forward, just like maximum lazing. There’s like plates and

like a newspaper and a coffee cup on the ground. What do you think that could be? It’s a pen maybe for the crossword. Um, and yeah, she’s on this kind of beautiful, like brown, like it looks like a wicker sort of woven, like, um, what do you call it? Like a kind of a veranda sofa type thing. And then there’s some kind of like crown thing floating above all of it. I wonder if that’s like a,

you know, the, the top of the roof of your like outside deck area or something like that. Yeah, maybe type of thing. Dreaming of the pub, it says. In that kind of like roofing kind of crown area are these like, almost like, I want to say like shrubic, like little tiny figures that are sort of like dancing. And like, I guess that’s like

her dream. But I mean, this reminds me. Oh, they’re at a bar. They’re all sitting on bar stools. Yeah, oh yeah. And they’re all at a bar. They’ve got little drinks. A little beer bottle, a little like cosmopolitan, you know, and they’re having a blast. They’re like, they look like 1920s flappers doing like sort of, um, really happy dance moves. Little drinks are gorgeous. Little beer bottles and

cocktail glasses. So this is the first of two, the two middle ones that we haven’t talked about yet. Um, self portrait at 28. Yeah, nah, pretty good. Thanks. 2019. And then, uh, the second one is called, it’s nothing really 2019. Um, they, they seem to be related. They both have this kind of, um,

border that you would see around like the mother, Mary and baby Jesus, you know, and then, um, um, the border itself is kind of set back by about, you know, four or five centimeters from this centerpiece, which has, um, a woman’s body in it. And she’s, she’s taking, it looks like she’s taking a sip from a cup. Oh no, it’s a selfie. It’s a mirror selfie nude in the mirror, you know? Um,

and it’s got a kind of little banner around it. Like, you know how people have a love heart with an arrow and then it just says mom on the banner. This one goes, yeah, nah, pretty good. Thanks. Self portrait at 28. It says at the top. And there’s about, I mean, I don’t know if we want to go ahead and count, but there’s like, I can see just at a glance, like seven or eight, maybe nine different kind of elemental designs

that are going on to make this bigger sort of whole thing. And that’s just the, the border of the mirror, you know, that she’s, that she’s doing a selfie in and, and you know, the mirror is on this little table. Um, so yeah, you can see the bottom of her phone, uh, in the mirror. And it’s like, like actually really incredibly, look how she’s done the skin

of like her belly. See how it like, it like makes it round like that. Yeah. Yeah. And then she’s like, you know, put all this like care into the curve of like thighs and like her knees coming to a point there. Really cool. The, the, like the skin texture is incredible. It’s like, it’s kind of like what we were saying about, um, Kathy over there that’s floating on the wall

with the red jacket on and the jeans. Like, um, we were talking about how, um, you’re kind of exalting something like, and like skin is kind of seen as like an exalted thing already. People are like, people got skincare regimes and stuff like that. But I don’t know, just this, the way that she’s like, so, so like, um, like, yeah, it’s, it’s elemental again. It’s like, she’s broken the skin

of her own nude body down into these like beautiful elemental, um, contour lines. Mm-hmm.

Incredible. I love that one. Yeah. Okay. So the next one looks very much the same. It’s got the kind of two frame thing going on. And this one has a little like storybook at the top. It says a very short time later.

A short time later, mood has changed. Yeah. And we basically have, you know, as you said, very similar, the same concept again, we’ve got like a sort of panel popping out, this sort of back panel. And then again, like a woman taking a selfie in the mirror naked. And then like some kind of like, like two sentence, like acrostic thing, it goes,

I love you. And then on the O and you, uh, come coming off of that and like just one to the side is no, you don’t. Yeah. And then just below that, there’s two figures, like having some really good sex. Yeah. Just absolutely going for it. It’s like one’s riding the other on top and the person on bottom has like posted their hand.

Yeah. And then the person on top is like really hugging them and holding them in this beautiful way. Yeah. And both of them have their heads like rocked back. Yeah. Amazing. It’s a really sexy, but very small. Interlocked, interlocked thighs. Yeah. Yeah. It’s just this nice little like vignette on the corner. And again, the same thing. It’s like a mirror selfie in the middle with,

with kind of pat, like a boarded pattern to the mirror, the same thing where it’s like a sort of, ornate outer mirror border and then a mirror selfie in the middle, you know? Yeah. I absolutely love this. Like, it’s just, Yeah. Yeah. There’s so much to look at. Impressive. And it’s this like beautiful, like, it’s like, it has this way of, I forget who said it, but there was some artist who was like, you know, art, like making the good stuff. It’s like, it’s about creating memorable images.

Yeah. And to me, it’s like, same with poems or whatever music. Yeah. But like, it’s such a hard thing to do, to make a memorable image, to make like someone stop in front of an image that you’ve made or posted. Yeah. So fucking hard. This like fine, fine practice of this needle, needle lace, needle work, does such a good job of like, luring you in, like, with its, you know, like, it’s almost like seductive.

It’s like nuances and it’s fineness. And it’s, you know, you know, even just the amount of work that goes into it, that’s like fundamentally alluring for a viewer. and then as you get into it these little details when you when you put it in an art context like this where we’re doing kind of image making and meaning making with it then you’ve got this this

really fine craft and then on top of it you’ve got these kind of really interesting stories cool yeah great great thanks so much thank you so much okay let’s see you soon bye

we would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which this episode was recorded and pay our respects to their elders past and present we extend that respect to aboriginal and torres strait islander peoples listening today follow us at hungup.au on instagram so you can see the pictures from this show

next week we’re at pari in paramatta for mixed business too thanks bye bye

Show notes

This is Hung Up from Sydney, recorded live on location by Aiden Loughlin and Matt Sitas. Each week we go to a gallery and talk about what we see. This week we’re at Gallery 76 in Concord West for the Festival of Lace. The show runs until the 4th of March. When we talk about art, it feels like there’s too much emphasis on “getting it”. But we think that it’s more fun to just trust ourselves and hang out with the works, and see what happens. Follow us on Instagram so you can see the works that we talk about in this show  www.instagram.com/hungup.au