26 September > 27 October 2024
Textile (Inter)action presents new artworks by Naarm/ Melbourne-based artists Helvi Apted, Britt Salt, and Shannon Slee. Alongside these works is a collaborative textile installation that invites the public to become part of the exhibition. These artists share an interest in the way textile techniques are passed down over time through generations, expand across cultures, and how the act of making together incites people to exchange stories and skills. In preparing for this exhibition, the artists challenged their distinct studio methodologies by working closely with one another. The result is a suite of new works that collapse the boundaries between the artists’ textile practices - stitches are repeated, forms replicated, and materials shared. The artists gathered material scraps from this process and reassembled them as collaborative works, stretching them over repurposed timber frames that were found in the storeroom of the Handweavers and Spinners Guild, and hard rubbish. Visitors are invited to join in this collective artmaking by utilising materials from the artists’ studios to create a textile collage in the centre of the gallery that will evolve throughout the exhibition. On the surrounding walls, a suite of artworks by each artist explores new techniques and territories of interest that continue to expand their individual practices.
For Textile (Inter)action, Shannon Slee presents three textile works of piecing, embroidery and weaving specifically dedicated to the brightly coloured geranium plant. Geraniums, commonly seen in Melbourne gardens, are noted in the text Eve’s Herbs by John Riddle as one of the plants valued historically for their role in sustaining women’s reproductive health. Looking to replicate and understand the geraniums unrestrained colour, Shannon turned to textile habits which not only link materials but play with geometries. This work is part of a broader project for Shannon which imagines a sustained connection between textile work, abstracted geometries and plants that hold historical and almost forgotten reproductive knowledge.
The Monochromes by Britt Salt are born out of the time she spent as artist in residence at a high-end fashion house earlier this year. Britt was drawn to the cutting tables of the studio where offcuts and scraps of fabric intermingled in baskets. Their soft skins traced the negative shapes of clothing patterns cut by the dressmaker. She found them beautiful, even if they hadn’t made the grade to become a coveted garment. Britt set about carefully collecting and ordering these fabrics by colour, shape, and size, attending to the unique qualities of each piece as a site of possibility. She turned them this way and that, flipped them, aligned them from different angles, and stitched each slowly by hand, considering them anew. The resulting works reconcile disparate parts in a unified yet unique whole that cannot be replicated (unlike garments). They occupy a space between obsoletion and utility, a space where transformation is possible.
Quietly framing space, Helvi Apted has sewn together a series of felt sculptures in the shape of small alcoves. These recessed spaces are often used to display devotional objects, or can be small spaces for retreat, away from a main area of activity. Helvi has reinterpreted the alcove in textiles to explore the potential of this form for contemplative practices in contemporary settings. The manufactured felt used to construct the Alcove series is made of visible threads and pulp from discarded garments that have been compressed into a uniform surface. This tapestry of remnant materials carries potential histories that speak to a common human experience, and the need for reconstitution and repair.
.
Helvi Apted’s practice is focused on contemporary soft sculpture that evokes abstract human forms and considers the dynamics of healing, change, and contemplation. She incorporates repetition and absurdist gestures to both amuse and convey feminist perspectives on bodily experience. Helvi uses felt that has been manufactured from discarded textiles and compressed into a uniform surface. These remnant threads carry the history of many garments, now intertwined in a way that speaks to the commonality of human experience.
Helvi (she/her) is a Finnish-Australian emerging artist, born in Djilang/Geelong. Helvi was a finalist in the 2024 Darebin Art Prize, a recipient of the 2024 R.L. Foote Design Studio Award, and the 2023 Masters Mentoring, VCA Art Award. Helvi has had a solo exhibition in Blindside gallery and shows in George Paton Gallery and Trocadero Art Space. In 2024 Helvi will exhibit in Linden Projects Space and fortyfivedownstairs. Helvi is completing a Masters of Contemporary Art at the Victorian College of the Arts.
IMAGE > [Top] Shannon Slee, Gutter Geraniums [detail], 2024. ‘Femboss’ jacket, faux leather jacket, nana’s fabric
remnants, wool, thread on found upholstery fabric, 130 x 230 cm. Photograph: Tobias Titz.
IMAGE > Helvi Apted, Alcove (study no.1), 2024, manufactured felt,thread, glass beads, 26 x 19 x 6 cm. Photograph:
Tobias Titz.
Shannon Slee has a fascination with the deconstruction and reparation of cloth to make new textile works that consider intimacy as a way to connect with conditions of the human experience. Informed by feminist theories, I present clothing as a direct representation of the bodies experience. I unpick and piece back together discarded clothing with fabric remnants, to create textile sites, that not only trace histories but materially links, joins and attaches us to them.
Shannon recently completed a Masters in Contemporary Art (First Class) at Victorian College of the Arts at Melbourne University. She has exhibited at The Australian Tapestry Workshop, Grainger Museum, Unassigned Gallery, VCA grad-show, VCA Artspace, Linden New Art Project Space and George Paton Gallery. Shannon has upcoming work in fortyfivedownstairs and Linden Project space with Helvi and Britt. She was awarded the Miegunyah Student Project Award. Her work is held the collection of the University of Melbourne.
IMAGE > Shannon Slee, On the Back of Her Skirt, 2023. Courtesy of the artist.
Britt Salt works across tapestry, drawing, sculpture, installation and public art. Her works are complex in their construction and minimal in aesthetic, exploring site-specific and imagined architectures. Using intuitive geometry and hand-crafted methodical processes, Salt traces the intricacies of order in public and private space. Seeking to unearth latent possibilities within ordered constraints, and control within disorder.
Britt grew up on Yamatji Country in Geraldton, Western Australian and is now based in Naarm/Melbourne. She has exhibited at CRAFT; Town Hall Gallery; Hazelhurst Regional Art Gallery; and PICA. She has received prestigious awards such as the Art & Australia Emerging Artist Award, and Freedman Foundation Travelling Scholarship. Britt has undertaken residencies at the Australian Tapestry Workshop; Youkobo, Japan; and Red Gate Gallery, Beijing. She has created major public artworks for Melbourne International Airport, Tsinghua University Beijing, and Fender Katsalidis Architects. Britt holds a Masters of Contemporary Art from Victorian College of the Arts (2023). Collections include Wangaratta Art Gallery; University of Melbourne; Justin Art House Museum; and Artbank.
IMAGE > Britt Salt, The Monochromes (Body 1) [detail], 2024, cutting table remnants, cotton, wool, 192 x 120cm. Courtesy of the artist.