WINDOWSPACE-BEEAC
ANNA
SANDE, Enough (2016)
Pale textiles, rods
of various dimensions
Current: July,
2016
79
Main Street BEEAC
In the 1970s I sewed some of my
favourite old clothes into shapes that made the letters
M E M O R I E S. Then I stuffed
them, cushion-like and hung them up. For a while they were on show with the
Victorian Sculptors’ collective, in Melbourne’s CBD. A tradesman came to my
house soon after that show – my stuffed clothes were now hanging on my wall. He
remarked that he had seen them in the city. It’s not just women who feel
something for old clothes.
In the 2000s I wrote an article
for the Craft Victoria magazine, an issue devoted to textiles.
Order and
sentiment – the ambiguous place of the flag. It began:
What
textile is it that drapes the dead, warns of pestilence, rises in celebration,
confers rank, is at the fore in war, is inverted in distress, lowered in
respect, dipped in deference, planted in possession and principally worn or
borne by men?
Flags dress
the body of the nation. They promote cause and presence. Flags are the
precursors of logos and branding, those frontline images that lurk in the
subconscious and only flirt with the realities of the whole. (Full
article: anna-sande.com.au)
I had been inspired to write about
flags because for many days I passed an exhibition outside the Melbourne
Museum, a collaboration conceived and created by local artist Glenn Romanis and
British-born, Angus Watt, the Lines of
Place banner installation was to be in
situ for 60 days, (in fact it remained for longer).
In 2005 I had a show at Conical,
Fitzroy, Did I leave anything behind –
T-shirts I had made and images of the locations where I made them.
Now I have a strong urge to reach
for textiles again – to make a statement about much of what is going on in the
world today – improvised white flags.
AS
noun: white flag;
a white
flag or cloth used as a symbol of surrender, truce, or a desire to parley.
Thank you to Tony Carlon for assistance with installation, and thank you to Marion Gaylard, Suzanne Frydman and Ean McDowell for textile contributions.
