Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Petite Miniature Textiles Exhibition

Last Friday my friend and I travelled to the Wangaratta Exhibitions Gallery to see the Petite, Miniature Textiles Exhibition in which I had a piece showing.  It was my first acceptance into an exhibition, so I was very excited.
I have tried to take pictures of the work before but they always seem to show the hand stitching too strongly.  It was good to see the work from a distance so that I could get a view of the complete work without being drawn into the detail.  

The piece, Fern Walk, was done on commercial felt.  I used foil in the background and then used a needle felting machine to put on wool and silk roving and then I hand stitched it.

I had not realised how far away Wangaratta is!  It rained all the way there and all the way back. I am usually happy to see the rain but not all the time I am driving. The journey was not too bad as it is straight up the Hume Freeway and very straightforward.  Overall, we travelled about 550km for the complete trip.  I was very pleased that my 15 year old car did it all on one tank of petrol.

The work in the show was well worth the trip.  There was a large variety of techniques - art quilts, art books, embroideries, jewellery, weaving, tapestry (quite a few by people I know through my course), machine embroidery, sculpture and 3D textiles, miniature knitting, crochet, wire knitting, prints and manipulated fabrics to name a few.  It was inspiring to see such a range of work.

The exhibition pieces all had to be within the 30cm x 30cm x 30cm restriction.  There was some very fine work, especially in the tapestry category.

We also were able to see Flourish, an exhibition celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Embroiderers' Guild of Victoria.  The work done especially for the golden anniversary was beautiful, all set out on emerald green backings to go with the theme of different branches doing different colours for the Celebrating Colour theme.

There was also a small exhibition of work selected from the Textile Collection that was next to the Petite exhibition, so we got to see that also.  There was some beautiful work there too!

All in all, a good day was had by all (two of us).


2 comments:

Brenda said...

Thank you for your report on the PETITE exhibition and the other events at Wangaratta. I also have a piece in this exhibition but Wangaratta is even futher away for me!

Mary said...

Thanks Brenda, it is a shame that it is not a travelling exhibition. I remember your piece, it was lovely and made me smile. (I looked up your name on the catalogue - I had to keep it as it is the first one I have been in.)