In May 2023 I began working with a Melbourne designer on a recent dream to publish a monograph of my reclaimed textile works. This dream is now becoming a reality and my hope is that the book will be printed in the second half of 2024 with a book launch in Melbourne in late September or early October - Springtime! And in the shops in time for Christmas! Three years ago I was confronted with having to limit the amount of labour-intensive work I was able to continue doing, due to repetitive strain injuries to both my shoulders from nearly two decades of cutting, and holding my arms up, pinning, unpinning and repinning the motifs to tulle. While I am still a practising artist and will always be, a book seemed like a great next project, which would remain as a legacy of my unique practice, of salvaging, reimagining and elevating the material of vintage and antique embroidery and lace, made by the hands of others. The book (whose title is still a closely held secret) has been beautifully designed and will be a full-colour, 168 page, hard-cover coffee-table style monograph. The work included in the book will be divided into three main chapters - NATURE, BODY & HOMAGE and, along with MY STORY of how I came to these materials and what has kept me so captivated with them for my art, I have had the privilege of three other authors coming on board to support my self-publication. More details will come available once we have a more finished product, but for now, below are some of the works which will be included in the book.
Reclaimed 2022
This exhibition was shown by Gould Creative @14Langridge gallery in Collingwood in February 2022. The body of work incorporates 28 pieces ranging from wall-installation to framed relief works, kinetic and static sculptural assemblages. From full-body figuration to portraiture, from light-hearted and surrealist-inspired sculptures to others with a strong environmental message, through to abstract, colour field works. Below are some images of the works in-situ in the gallery.
Heads and Tales
Belle’s Epoque, Buddha’s Babies and Poppie’s Pouffe - are part of a body of work exploring portraiture which I began experimenting with in 2016 and completed in late 2021 for my exhibition RECLAIMED - both literally and in creating a portrait of the medium - playing with both 2 and 3D forms. The 3D works complimented the more complex, time-consuming relief works. I acquired several canvas milliner's hat blocks, which are roughly head shaped and began embellishing them with vintage needlework and beadwork. They are filled with a straw substance, or foam and so are easy to pin in to (the black on black piece is a velour and foam shop mannequin head). Below are some photos of the heads in progress - I found them playful to make and, hope they bring to mind such artists as Louise Bourgeois, Giuseppe Arcimboldo and Ah Xian. Below are photos of the works in their early stages (photos by me) and when completed (photos by Gavin Hansford).
The reiteration of REST - the sleeping hermaphrodite, 2018-21 after Anon (ancient) & Bernini 1620
Today I began resolving how to manage this huge work on my own, to prepare it for mounting and framing… I decided to cut it into three sections. It’s way too big and fragile, with its countless pins, for me to move and turn the whole work - even with help it’s too precarious. So, cutting it into sections that can fit snuggly back together once backed with silk organza, was the best solution. Here are some photos of my work in the studio (I do have a permit as there is no-one else in the building currently and I cannot do this work from home). Once each section is stabilized at back, with a layer of Vliesofix and silk organza, it can be pinned into the two layers of mount board - one layer of museum foam-core which lies under the blue area, and then a larger museum and Kapa board mount, into which the whole work is pinned and onto which it will float. A huge painstaking process, but one I’m excited to have begun resolving today! Extra motifs will be added to the top, bottom and sides (blue-birds, flowers, butterflies etc), as the side friezes that were included for the bed installation had to be cut away for framing and will form a new, separate artwork titled “Rest-aura”.
Koala Update 2021
The koala and joey (after Ferdinand Bauer c.1800) that I commenced in February 2020, following dreadful bushfires in my home State of Victoria, Australia is, (after a year which included a house-move, injury to my shoulders and Covid lockdowns!) finally nearing completion. This journal entry shows the work, in the final stages of the portraits with the addition and development, of a dramatic background. In the earlier journal entry about the work, this background was not planned or even conceived, but recently I decided that it needed a contrast to the greys, browns and whites of the koalas. I began looking again at photos from the bushfires and did a small drawing on which to base my background. The large leaves were extracted from Vietnamese applique placemats, and I’ve included several actual gumleaves in cross-stitch. Some of the applique leaves will be tea stained and have singed edges. The dramatic background and the new title “Flee - Koala & Joey (after Ferdinand Bauer)” hopefully give the work more sense of urgency about the plight of our exquisite icon and the relationship between endangered species in the natural world and disappearing traditions of the home. The last few photos show the work in the process of being mounted ready for framing.
Works in Progress
This entry shows some of the works-in-progress that will join the others in the next exhibition (planned for a pop-up space, TBC) with Gould Creative, hopefully in early 2022. Some of the artworks I’m currently working on are shown here. The photos were taken on my (rather inadequate) phone camera, so they don’t show the works at their absolute best but, as always, I will have each one professionally photographed when finished. Gavin Hansford has been my photographer since 2001, that’s 19 years! His work has enabled mine to be published in magazines in Australia, the UK, Canada, the USA, France and Spain. I highly recommend him if you require a good photographer for your own artwork. Thank you for visiting me here, your interest and support is valued!
Coral - Form 2, getting there also...
In July 2020 I began work on Coral - form 2, and it was making this work that triggered my shoulder/arm injuries (tendinopathy). It has been seven months since I was able to look at the work again and begin slowly adding to it. My arms are sadly not able to do the very intense, repetitive pinning of the edging lace as I did initially and so, have decided to infill the remaining areas of the mannequin with larger motifs (still maintaining this, smaller Coral form’s relationship to bleaching, as opposed to the highly coloured, alive, corals of Form 1). Photos show the progress to date. This work is almost finished now (July ‘21) and will be included, along with Coral - Form 1 in a group exhibition at Town Hall Gallery in October 2021.
Coral - Form 1, finally getting there...
After seven months of injury* and inability to work, I am slowly beginning to do a small amount in the studio each week. I’ve begun clinical pilates (after 6 months of weekly physio) and my instructor wants me building up to a regular routine - even if for only two hours work at one time…. slowly, slowly. In order to not spend much time here, typing… a few photos below show progress on Coral Form 1, which was begun in late 2019 and which has now been completely transferred from the wall to the mannequin, piece by piece. Still a long way to go until she’s finished (as she will be suspended from the ceiling on a swivel, and have an antique chandelier headdress - I hope!), but it’s great to get the body almost completed. * (I have tendinopathy in both my shoulders and bicep damage from repetitive work over the past 20 years!)
Coral Form 2 - work in progress July 2020
Fringing is a type of coral reef and so it seems appropriate that this second ‘coral form’, built on a vintage mannequin, be fringed with reclaimed edging lace. The lace comes from various table-linens that I have used over the years to extract embroidery and lace from. In contrast to the vibrantly coloured Coral Form 1, this piece references the calcified ‘architectural’ structure of the coral, left behind when bleaching sadly occurs due to climate change.
Photos show the development of Coral Form 2, in the studio with Coral Form 1, (pinned to the studio wall and the vintage mannequin extended with plaster bandage, that it will eventually embellish, in the background). The larger mannequin was bought in a Warrnambool junk shop several years ago and the 2nd mannequin was rescued from hard rubbish in my neighbourhood a year or so ago, (coincidentally both mannequins were covered in the same 1970’s paisley pattern). My plan is that the larger Coral Form 1 will be suspended from the ceiling on a fishing swivel, in the same way that my earlier work, Let The Jungle In 2013 was.
Painterly Squares - my colour palettes
Since embarking on the long-term project of making art from reclaimed textiles, I’ve only made one geometric piece - until now. That first piece titled ‘Sampler’, is a very large pigment print created from high res scans of my collection of vintage doily designs. (You can find this work here on the website). In early May 2020 I embarked on my second geometric work, which will hopefully evolve into a large wall-installation of textile squares, evoking a “colour palette”. This work will both reflect my working process (of collecting, cutting, collating and pinning discarded needlework) and more broadly, it will reference the artist’s palette, seen primarily as a tool of painters. Like many artists working in textile processes, I arrange my materials into various shades on the colour wheel, ready for later use. And with this work I want to associate the traditions of needlework and my particular process, with the traditions and processes of working with paint. This continues my commitment to raising the profile of discarded and disinherited needlework, often derided as “merely women’s work” to the status of fine art*. Over the past 3 weeks I have made 8 coloured squares, in which the extracted embroidery is pinned directly into the museum board cut to size (16 x 16 cms), using my favourite tool for mounting my work - brass beading-pins. The photos below give you a glimpse of the process and the work to date.
(the Bauhaus women artists were) “…intent on ushering textiles – a medium long dismissed as so-called “women’s work” – into the fine art canon.” You can read this inspiring article on how the women weavers of the Bauhaus have inspired generations of women artists.
Ornamentation in the Age of Coronavirus - Mobilia Gallery USA
In April I received an invitation to join a fundraising art project in the USA, through Mobilia Gallery in Boston. The idea is for each invited artist to make a mask that is both functional and reflects their individual ‘signature practice’. Money from the sale of masks will go towards the Boston Emergency Relief Fund. I ended up making a series of 3 masks, each using reclaimed vintage linen and embroidery from my collection. I downloaded a free pattern from the website: www.instructibles.com/id/DIY-Cloth-Face-Mask/ and chose embroidery for each mask that would have symbolic meaning, associated with this huge humanitarian crisis the world is currently facing. I constructed one mask using large, dramatic vintage embroidered butterflies - representing rebirth and recovery. Another mask uses large poppies, which I found in Paris in 2010 - (opium poppies) representing relief from pain and; for the final mask I used an array of small red flowers combined into the motif of a Red Cross - representing care and protection. The masks are very small objects which required painstaking stitching on my inherited vintage Singer sewing machine. One is backed with breathable muslin, one with silk organza and one with huckaback towelling. I got so enthused by this project that I also made a carry bag to hold the masks on their journey to the USA. I used a beautiful vintage damask and stitched two delicate sprays of flowers embroidered in the 1940’s along with some unique, antique French silk embroidered letters (also collected in France in 2010) which spell the word C O V I D, along with roman numerals XIX. I lined the bag with ivory coloured silk organza and used a pale blue vintage ribbon for the draw string. Along with the galleries contribution I will donate my portion of any sales to the Boston Relief Fund. Below are some photos of the masks in progress, along with the finished group and the bag. Here is a link to the Mobilia Gallery Design Store where the masks are for sale.
Remaking an Icon
In 2012 I exhibited Sanctuary at Heide MoMA and since then have done a lot of things besides reinterpreting historical imagery of flora and fauna. I have however, for some years wanted to reinterpret some vulnerable and/or endangered mammals. I’ve contemplated a Polar bear and a Koala and since the horrific bushfires of this summer, which have devastated our precious koala population, I’ve begun work on a large koala and joey portrait. The Austrian naturalist Ferdinand Bauer (who travelled to Australia with Matthew Flinders) made several exquisite drawings of koalas on his voyage to the continent in the early 1800’s. I’ve chosen to rework his watercolour drawings, one of which shows a mother with her joey on her back. To be consistent with several other recent works which are in an elliptical format, the Koala joey has been moved atop the mother, so that it peers from out between her ears. Below are the Bauer drawings (collection: Natural History Museum London, UK); my reinterpretation in photocopy and ink; the work in progress over 3 weeks to date. Thank you for visiting.
Working towards another solo...
My next exhibition, which I hope will be held with Gould Creative (previously Gould Galleries) in a pop-up space somewhere in Melbourne, will incorporate works created over the past four years, working title: Louise Saxton: 2016-2020. Some pieces in this new exhibition were exhibited previously in The Linen Project (TLP) - Melbourne in 2018 and Wangaratta 2019 and are included in this post. Other works, made over the past four years are also included here and were exhibited with Gould Creative at SPRING 1883 in Sydney in 2019. Current works-in-progress will be added to a new ‘journal’ post soon.
The Linen Project 2016 - 2018
The Linen Project, which has been several decades in the collecting and 2.5 years in the making has now opened at the spectacular Town Hall Gallery in Hawthorn, VIC, Australia. I feel honoured to have been given the three main gallery spaces in which to exhibit The Linen Project and am thrilled to share the photos with you here! A new page on the website’s Gallery will be coming soon, but for now, just this slideshow journal entry. Please go along to City of Boroondara’s Town Hall Gallery if you can, (360 Burwood Rd, Hawthorn Tues-Sun). The exhibition runs until 16th December 2018 and then travels to Wangaratta Art Gallery from 9 Feb - 31 March 2019. Photos by Gavin Hansford. Courtesy of the artist and Gould Creative, Melbourne. © Louise Saxton 2018.
This project was generously sponsored by the St Vincent’s Artist in Residency Program, Caritas Chrisiti Palliative Care Hospice, Kew. With many thanks to Curator, Monique Silk and also to the curatorial team at Town Hall Gallery for their support and belief in the project.
The Linen Project 2006-2018 celebrating the materiality of linens and investigating their role in our lives
My second residency at Caritas Christi hospice in Kew, for the St Vincent's Hospital Residency Program has now been underway for 18 months. I am continuing to us my time in the 'cloistered' room with spectacular views over the Studley parklands, to fully develop the project that has been in the wings for several years now - The Linen Project. Over the decade I've been collecting, extracting and reconstructing domestic needlework, I've also accumulated a stockpile of leftover linens. The quality of vintage and antique linens is beautiful to touch and to see and that kind of linen, which was once an everyday object, is now rare and very expensive. Many of the leftover doileys, teaclothes, tray and tablecloths etc have a unique negative space, which mimics the embroidered motif that it once held. Others have more random negative shapes from less-painstaking extraction. These shapes are being infilled, by stitching with a vintage sewing machine, another layer of linen - "unfinished business" from either embroidery that was partially started but never completed, or linens with only the embroidery transfer. See photos below. The Linen Project will, be exhibited as an immersive installation at the Town Hall Gallery, Hawthorn in October-December 2018. The viewer will be surrounded and, in some way held by, the protective and comforting materiality of linen. The Linen Project is a homage to my mother, her mother and all the mothers, who have made and used domestic linens to care for their families. It also acknowledges the intrinsic role of linens in the healing and care of patients in the hospital setting.
Rest 2018 - the Sleeping Hermaphrodite by Anon (ancient) & Bernini 1620
This work, which has been in planning (in both my imaginings and on paper) for quite some time, is finally being realised for inclusion in my solo exhibition, The Linen Project (Hawthorn Town Hall Gallery Oct-Dec 2018). It was exciting to pin a string gridline on the wall, then 3metres of nylon tulle and start pinning (after weeks of extracting the embroidery with the help of a studio assistant). The image is appropriated from The Sleeping Hermaphrodite sculpture in the Louvre – an ancient figure for which Bernini was commissioned to sculpt the tufted mattress and pillow, in 1620.The figure for my bed will lay on a ground of abundant blue and white embroidery described through a Japanese wave pattern, placed over an antique hospital bed,[1] it will refer to life as an ocean and a garden - ebbing, flowing, rising, falling, blooming and decaying. When deciding on the hospital bed as a base for a major sculptural assemblage, I envisaged a sleeping or resting figure and searched for images, initially of a person in foetal position (referencing the situation of many in palliative care) and eventually found an aerial view of the marble sleeping hermaphrodite in The Louvre. This seemed a perfect motif because, while it referenced a resting and not necessarily a dying person, the hermaphrodite speaks to the fact that whatever our gender, we all live and die. This will be a major work with months of cutting and pinning ahead of me and the first major sculptural work since "Let the Jungle In" 2013. In the link below you will see some photos of the sculpture in the Louvre, the design in transparency on my projector and the work in its very early stages of development and some of the myriad, pre-cut embroideries (reclaimed as always from vintage table linens). Also included in the photos is the work finished as a wall installation and installed in The Linen Project at Town Hall Gallery, on the hospital bed.
[1] Found in a junk shop in Warrnambool and said to have come from a bush nursing hospital, turn of last century.
From the Bower: Patterns of Collecting in Ballarat
From the Bower: patterns of collecting, with Deborah Klein, Loris Button, Carole Wilson and myself, has travelled to the Art Gallery of Ballarat, opening on Saturday 29th July and running until 17th September 2017. The opening was well attended with a thoughtful and illuminating speech by Jason Smith, Director of the Geelong Art Gallery. The show is beautifully curated by Brenda Wellman and installed over 4 days with her fabulous team (and our assistance). We held a forum on Saturday 12th August with 60 or so people in attendance and I ran my "reclaim, recycle, remake" workshop with 14 participants on the Sunday. The show is being very well received and we are all very happy with the final iteration of our show, which was two years in development before it's first exhibition in March at Warrnambool Art Gallery. Below are a selection of lovely installation photos by Tim Gresham.
Finally, 'Frida'...
After many months on hiatus, after many months of on and off work, Frida has finally re-emerged in order for me to tackle the difficult problem of how to mount the work for framing! As this is the first portrait work I've made in delicate, antique lace, and she was constructed on tulle suspended and stretched taut on the studio wall, there was an etherealness, which disappeared when I lay her on the mount board! The dark tones in the face became far too strong and I was struck with fear that the work may never be resolved. Below are some photos of the first stage of the process, which has been even more labour intensive than usual - requiring three layers of museum foam-core. The work was rolled around card with tissue paper, then transferred to a stronger layer of tulle on the wall. After pinning was complete the mount boards were delivered to my studio and prepared....areas of flesh were removed from the middle layer to allow light to penetrate the delicate lace which creates the face. It has been painstaking work, but also exciting, to be creating a unique process for the unique materiality of my practice - embroidery and lace discarded, disinherited, rescued and remade. In another journal post I will show the pinning to mount-board process and the final result, so I hope you will stay tuned!
A wall of garden
This is an ongoing installation work, which seeks to use a large portion of the embroidered flowers in my 'stockpile' of domestic linens - doilies, tea and tray-cloths, tablecloths etc. I began working on these in November 2016, using embroidery hoops (bought in Malaysia in 2008). I was preparing to give a workshop to a group of older crafters and because I enjoyed the simplicity of working within the limited format of the hoop and working with one colour, or from one piece of domestic table linen, I decided to transfer each one from the hoop to a large 300 x 185cm length of tulle on my studio wall. The idea is to create a large wall of flora, or a 'wall garden'. As with my work of 2015 Feint Heart, I want the viewer to feel a sense of being overwhelmed by the labour, the love and the beauty of every day needlework - when taken out of its functional setting and presented on masse in this way. The photos below show the work in progress, both on the hoops and growing on the wall.
From the Bower: patterns of collecting
This joint exhibition with Loris Button, Deborah Klein, myself and Carole Wilson is now on show at the Warrnambool Art Gallery until 12 June 2017. It then travels to Ballarat Art Gallery from 29th July - 17th September 2017. Two years in the planning, it took three full days and eight 8 people to install the many artworks and hundreds of objects. 'The artists are linked by their studio practice, their appreciation of textiles and traditional sewing crafts, their regional locations and connections, and their love of gleaning. Their studio collections range from domestic textiles and sewing paraphernalia, curiosities, natural history specimens, memorabilia, discarded books and china, carpet and linoleum, and old tools of trade. In this exhibition a portion of each artist’s studio collection is gathered, in an engaging and dynamic installation, alongside works by the artists which respond directly and/or relate to, their greater collection objects. The exhibition draws the individual artists together into one large ‘bower’ and creates a space in which the private becomes public. It allows the viewer to reflect upon the process of collecting, gathering and making.' Dr Carole Wilson.
Below are some photos taken during installation.