Belconnen Christmas Market

What a crazy two weeks it's been with the lead up to Christmas.  It seems like there is a market on every weekend, and in fact there are more, with several markets on the same time all competing for public attention.  My first market at Undercurrent went really well - that was the first three-day market I had ever done -so thanks to all my loyal customers and friends who dropped by to say hi and to those who purchased some goodies for Christmas presents.

This Sunday it is my last market for the year, at the Belconnen Arts Centre.

I always love the ambiance of the Belconnen Art Centre markets, and they are so well organised and supported it makes doing business a pleasure! Hope to see you there if you didn't make it to any of my other sales over the past couple of weeks, and if I don't see you, have a very happy and safe Christmas and New Year with your friends and family. Best wishes for a creative and peaceful 2016. Julie xx

UNDERCURRENT

Thanks to all my loyal friends and customers who visited my Open Studio last Sunday as part of DESIGN Canberra. It was a great day, perfect temperature, and I was run off my feet chatting and ringing that till! Luckily for me my friend Belinda Jessup popped in to deliver a coffee in the morning...and stayed to help behind the sales desk until 3pm.  Couldn't have done it without her!

This weekend I will be at Undercurrent Design Market at the National Portrait Gallery.  This is my debut at this market, but I have heard so many good things about it I thought I would give it a try.  However, as usual, my busy life intrudes.  I fly back from Melbourne on Friday just in time to set up my stall for the opening at 5pm. It should be a great weekend though, with so many other things happening as part of DESIGN Canberra.  Last night I attended the DesignBuzz talks which included Jessica Hemmings (I have written about her in previous posts) and Indigenous textile designer Lucy Simpson, who gave an inspiring talk about the influence that place has in design.

DESIGN Canberra will be finishing this coming weekend, so if you have the chance to attend some of the events, many of which are free, then go along! Canberra has definitely come of age and it's fantastic to see so many creative people living and working here. All kudos to Craft ACT: Craft and Design Centre for initiating this wonderful festival.

DESIGN Canberra

DESIGN Canberra is being launched tomorrow night at the National Portrait Gallery and will run from 21 - 29 November.  As part of Living Artists, Kirsty, Lisa and myself are opening up our studios to the public again, thanks to the successful event last year.  And for those of you who came last year in the sweltering heat....this Sunday should only reach a top of 25...perfect.

We have all been working hard delving into our archives and pulling out some amazing bargains for you as well as making new work for sale.  This Sunday is an opportunity to see our space, have a chat over a cold drink, and see some work that you would never get to see otherwise. See you there!
Sunday 22nd,  10-3pm, The Hayshed, 7 Beltana Road Pialligo

Please park on Beltana Road and walk in

here & there

Last Friday fellow Canberran, Sharon Peoples, and I were in Sydney for the opening of our group exhibition, Here & There, together with shibori-artist extraordinaire, Barbara Rogers, at her gallery, Barometer, in Paddington.

Barbara Rogers (left) talking to Jane Burns at the Here & There opening

Here & There responds to the concept of time and place - of being in one geographical location whilst making work about a distant other - about our experiences of dislocation and displacement as artists.

For me, this occurred during my 3-month Asialink residency at Rimbun Dahan in Malaysia in 2013.  I was busy making work about Canberra for my exhibition Natural Wonders ( Narek Galleries in 2013) in the heat and humidity of a tropical home-away-from-home. My thoughts about Canberra, in particular Pialligo and Aranda were more distilled and defined despite the thousands of kilometres between us. It seemed that distance enabled me to envision and articulate my thoughts on home with more clarity.

Seasonal Variations I-IV - Julie Ryder

For Sharon Peoples, her pilgrimage to Santiago di Compostella provided the inspiration for new work about walking and thinking, about slowing down to absorb the details of her immediate environment. This camino resulted in her solo exhibition Habitus ( Narek Galleries in 2014).  Sharon states that the word habitus can refer to 'second nature', and that for her embroidery is part of her identity - she embroiders every day. The repetitive and meditative nature of embroidery reflected her camino through Spain - in both walking and embroidering Sharon truly engaged her whole self.

Installation of Sharon People's work in Here &There

For Barbara Rogers, inspiration came from trips to Japan to investigate different methods of shibori. Over many years Barbara has experimented and refined her personal interpretation of carved board clamped resist shibori,  called itajime gasuri.  This technique results in an ikat-like patterning on woven cloth, however Roger's inspiration for this new body of work was found in Meisen silk kimono produced from the 1920's -1950's. Her modern interpretation is bold and graphic, which belies the complicated technique used to produce it.

Barbara Rogers' complex itajime gasuri

We were most fortunate to have Professor Jessica Hemmings officially open the exhibition. Jessica is in Australia for a short time to exhibit the Migrations exhibition (see previous post); to travel and speak in other institutions and to participate in DESIGN Canberra as part of Design Buzz as well as concentrating on writing...and running!

Jessica Hemmings (centre) with Barbara Rogers (L) and Sharon Peoples (R)

We thank her so much for her insightful comments during her opening speech and look forward to hearing her talk with indigenous designer, Lucy Simpson, as part of Design Buzz on 24th November.

Here & There continues until November 28th.

Opening Hours are 11 - 5pm,   Wednesday - Saturday

For those of you who can't make it to Sydney, we will be showing an extended version of Here & There at the Belconnen Arts Centre in April-May 2016

Migrations @ COFA

Jacarandas in full bloom in Oxford St, Paddington....

I had a fleeting visit to Sydney this week to give a talk about my work and to attend the opening of the Migrations exhibition at COFA.  This exhibition has literally travelled the world - from Dublin, Bergen, Omaha, Miami, London, Cape Town and now Sydney. Curated by Professor Jessica Hemmings, editor of 'Cultural Threads: transnational textiles today', this exhibition evolves on each leg of the journey as Jessica packs selected pieces into her hand-luggage and wings her way across the globe, aptly illustrating her writings about the transportability of textiles.

Liz Williamson at the COFA seminar

It was great to catch up with Jessica again at the Seminar and to attend the opening of the Migrations exhibition. It was also wonderful to hear from Liz and students Blake Griffiths and Jennifer Goodwin about their experiences as interns in India.  In the foyer gallery Cultural Textiles : rug project was on display, with design work and some woven rugs by a recent trip to India by Liz Williamson and her students. This was part of the Cultural Textiles fieldwork course conducted in Gujarat in Jan/Feb 2015.

The student's designs were block printed in natural dyes by Sufiyan Khatri in his Ajarkh workshop in Ajarakhpur  in Kutch.

Colour+Print in Geelong

Garnet House at Geelong Grammar School - home away from home.

Straight from the GLINT residency to a residential workshop for TAFTA at Geelong, this has been one hectic month. This year at Textile Forum I taught 'Colour+Print' to ten students from all over Australia, at the Geelong Grammar School in Victoria. Most of the students were new to screen-printing and it was great to have two students in my class from last year's 'Printing with mordants and natural dyes' workshop, Rasa and Alison.

Anna hand-painting a beautiful floral piece with her test colours beside her

Pirjo building up delicately coloured and textured backgrounds for further work

During the week I shared my knowledge and demonstrated how to mix fabric paints to specific colours; how to develop an individual colour-palette for textile design; how to produce striking fabrics using low-tech methods and an introduction to printing with silk-screens. The ladies in the workshop had diverse textile backgrounds and experiences, and this course gave many of them the opportunity to get out of their comfort zone and learn new skills which could be incorporated into their work in the future.

Final display of work in a mini-exhibition this morning

Tea towels and textile samples from the workshop

Rasa

Libby

Vanessa

Marlene

Kate, Pirjo, Anna and Alison in front of class work.

I have to say it was one of the most productive and also enjoyable workshops I have taught, in part due to the fantastic students but also to the immediate nature of screen-printing which opens up all sorts of possibilities for extending the knowledge of design and colour. Thanks to Kate, Pirjo, Libby, Pam, Helen and Vanessa, Marlene, Rasa and Anna...well done!

GLINT open studio talks

A few photos of the open studios at the Glassworks last Saturday. Here is Spike giving a talk about her work in GLINT. Unfortunately Deb and Nicci were overseas, George was in Adelaide and Luke was MIA, so there were just two of us to give a few insights into the residency as a whole. In the foreground is my work, showing my 'mega-slides' which captured everyone's attention.