2016 : 6 ANNA SANDE JULY 2016

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.