Queensland Art Gallery Presscuttings Book 8 : Pressclippings, 1977-1981

.!1=1fil USTRAUMI n..n. Jw 25 1•1 ~ _ iekclaY- Magazine :Ilie Arts When painte1 11 turns weaver T. HE inevitable has hap- ft'ilon?_ pened. A few months t;JW LJ. ago ABC Television personality Winnie Pelz hung up her video tapes and be- •came executive chairman of Adelaide's Jam Factory craft workshops and gallery. And now there's a first-class ex– hibition of weaving on show in the gallery, the major piece in which has been snapped up by the Queensland Art Gallery. But the work la not Winnie Pelz's, even though she Is a highly accom– pllahed weaver In her own right. Rather, It Is the work of one Kay Lawrence, 34, mother of two (which Is Important to mention). {IOmetlme painter, and · now the second woman In Adelaide to · show In weaving the absurdity of the so-cal– led distinction between art and craft. Like Winnie Pelz, Kay Lawrence regards her period of study at the Edinburgh COiiege of Art as a "lib– eration". The t.wo women met there In the late severities and both attest to a "standard of work and a le11el of commitment" In the COiiege· rarely seen In Australia. One of the guiding lights In this now· widely recognlaed tapestry "renaissance" In Scotland was the weaver Archie Brennan, and It was he who flnt Introduced Kay Law– rence to the medium when he came to Adelaide In 19'15 and conducted a wo~op for weaven. She was then a lecturer In painting and printm'1klng at Ballabury College or Advanced ~ucatlon, and ft was a lnatlon of Brennan and 'IJ>– blng motherhood that ir ilde witch from easel to loom. Dalrennan made weaving seem ex– clDngrmade me discover I aiuld ex– -ss In weaving . the kinds of t.,-.gs I sought to express In paint." s_lle says. !=4nd ~ting and motherhood are not really compatible - with weM1lng you can stop and start.'' she became a weaver rather . a painter, though painting d:drawlng are still used In work– lµg towards the concepts that even– ~ually emerge as highly textured l)aslcally two dimensional Images In fibre. PETER WARD consists of a thousand leaves knot– ted onto a grid of fibre. They arc now all brown.,grey, grey-Iliac. and sear, Intentionally so, because the project was desl~ed to show "the process of decay")from fresh green through all the celor variations of dessication. The outstanding work of the ex– hibition is the one Queensland Is buying. It Is a series or "window" t!lpes.tries called A Walk Around on the /nsi/1., Looking Out. It comm– ences with a series of color pho– tographs of domestic windows In her own house. These have then been drawn and painted, and ft. nally worked up as five large woven pieces. They are all evOClltlve and referring to a poem by the Greek– Alexandrian poet Cavafy which commences "the windows In these darkened rooms where I spend op– pressive days". The genesis of this technically demanding and Impor– tant work lay In a COntemprary Art Society project exhibition last year for which a number or Adelaide artists were Invited to produce works called Arti,u Waiki. ' "I thought of · doing a painting based on walking around the sub- 11rban environment near where I live," she explains. "But I found that with two children In tow It was Impossible. So I remembered the Zen story about two brothers, one rich, one poor, who set out to find enlightenment - one by travelling around the world and the other by travelling around his garden. They both discovered the same thing. The 'oppression' I suppose was the feeling of not being able to go out and paint - and so the wov~n Ima-' ges ~merged expresslne the .Jdea of a series or domestic Interiors from which a person looks out Into the light." Another major piece in the show Is called Grev Gridt Colour Nota– tlo'} of Mononton11 which, she says, ls a "Dada-esque" expression of a Cavafy poem In which each square in the long oblong grid expresses In soft greys, texture, and relief, a let– ter of the alphabet arranged In the order they fall In the poem. It Is a subtle and expressive work - "a vis– ual Image that relates to the poem but which Isn't an Illustration or It", is how she describes It. :":i'apestry Is more exciting t 1 1an paltit," she says, "The range of tex- To achieve her very wide range of Cures you can achieve Is one lmpor- colored and textural effects and tant difference, but also there's a contrasts she doubles up warps - i:lchness about tapestry that paint say, from four to the Inch to elght– c;an,,never have - and a challenge uses wool with strands of mercer– to overcoming the strong grid that lsed cotton or linen for silken ef- l'he medium Imposes." fects, and sometimes hand-dyed : ... · · rni;:~. ("I even used a baby's singlet :T~ Jam Factory Uallery exhlbl- . iu Monotony, little personal me– tlon ls an eloquent Illustration of meotos often creep in," she says). what she means. Eighteen tapes- .. · .. tries and seventeen drawings that Her vertlcle scaffolding loom is i;elate to tapestries or the "grid" In the bedroom ("all women artists · fortl) Itself, range from miniatures put their art In with the chlldren"l, through major pieces a metre or so and she w, rks_at the front of the square, to a huge "leaf-erld" work loom. proe ress1vely building up or This pa·ir of rare Princess· Parrots (Polytelis alexandrae) is one of many stunning . color plates in a new edition of Australian Parrots by, Joseph M.Forshaw, illustrated by William T. Cooper, which ha~ i just been published by Landsdowne Press at $75. The bird, whir.I• '' is a native of Central Australia, is now rarely seen in its natural ,habitat. constructing image and texture. "At Edinburgh I learned to look at tapestry In terms of the Ideas being expressed rather than the tech– nique," she says. "In Australia ever– ybody approaches It from the other way around. When I first started working I found It very hard to ad– just the technique to the things I wanted to say but they were very experimental there. "Because Ideas came first they said 'Oh, well, use any technique you like, invent one If there isn't one', that was how liberating It all was." Not everything In this Is en•,irely sweetness and light, however. Kay Lawrence took six months to make A Walk Around on the Inside Look– Ing Out, and the going price ls $5000. . "If you're In the business for money, forget it," she says. "All tap– estry workshops find it very hard to make ends meet because It Is a ti– me-consuming medium. But It Is a window on my kind of world." Olat ' was recently constructed In dne of Adelaide's parklands and _Righl...Kay Lawrence with one of her tapestries, Grey Grip