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Sampler

Hand Held Gallery

Melbourne, Australia

Exhibition Dates:

24 January - 16 February 2013

The series of works produced for Sampler have predominately started their life in the moving image; mostly that of music film clips.  These short, often narrative films have changed the way people think of music, lifting pop starts into the realms of fashionistas, celebrity and entrepreneurs.

 

Sampler translates images of women pop stars in fleeting and sometimes candid moments into the traditional and centuries unchanged medium of woven tapestry.  Using a variety of very low tech methods to obtain source material, pixilated images are transformed into the corresponding beads and pixels of tapestry, creating an interrogation between the plastic pop world and artisan techniques.

 

I've been interested in images of women, particularly in contemporary life for quite some time.  As a child I was a bit obsessed with watching music film clips, studying what they were wearing and emulating their choreographed moves in my own amateur dance classes.

 

The pop world as a child was an imaginary one.  Nothing seemed real.  Colours were muted or super saturated.  The lyrics were predictable but also mirrored scenarios in our lives.  Love lost, happiness, melancholy; you could lose yourself in this world.

 

All of this contradicts the tapestry and art world.  To me, tapestry is serious, time consuming, and situated in a long history.  But I want my tapestries to be like a pop song; fun, addictive and something that gets stuck in your head.

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