habitat
While studying for the Advanced Diploma of Visual Arts, I realised that a great deal of my heart in artwork was embedded in textiles.
In the 1970’s I spun, dyed wool with natural dyes, knitted, crocheted, and wove on looms, garments and wall hangings. But it was the natural dyes that totally fascinated me. While studying for the Advanced Diploma of Visual Arts in 2017, I realised that a great deal of my heart in artwork was embedded in textiles.
The seemingly magical transformation of colour with purely natural materials, leaves, bark, and flowers that attracted the artist within me. Raw fleece was easy to source, and Spinners and Weaver groups were popping up in townships everywhere in Australia. My love of wool fibre stemmed from an early childhood memory of a short stay on a sheep station in Lara where at 7 years of age I came across raw greasy wool and remember washing it and wanting desperately to make something out of it. Some distant DNA memory stirred perhaps.
My aim is to present the beauty of nature and the poetry within the Australian landscape.
When I happened to hear an interview on the ABC with India Flint, an Australian artist, poet, and adventurer as well as the “mother of the eco print”, it awakened again the longing to work with natural fibre and materials once more.
The results were a body of work focussed on using upcycled eco printed silk scraps from garments I had made over the years through my business Alchemy of Colour. The material is woven, tied, dyed, stiffened, and framed with various traditional and contemporary methods some of which are reminiscent of the Japanese aesthetic of Shibui, that of simple, subtle, unobtrusive beauty.
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Habitat Weeping
artists' statement
Barbara Pritchard. Adv. Dip. Vis. Arts
In my work, “Habitat Weeping”, I hope to convey my connection to and love for the Australian bushland which has suffered so much from fire, logging, and climate change. The silk textiles I have used are reclaimed offcuts from garments I have made, and these have been embedded into a stretched recycled fishing net background then stiffened in part with organic solutions. I have used traditional and contemporary dyeing techniques to extract colour and leaf prints from windfalls left by trees I have planted. My aim is to present the beauty of nature and the poetry within the Australian landscape.
‘I continue to expand and develop and explore further dynamic methods into the initial concept of ‘Habitat’ being mindful of the need for a continued respect of the ethos of recycle, upcycle, and limiting the use of precious resources.’