Exhibition Statement, September seminar, 2024

‘So by day she’d weave at her great and growing web – by night, by the light of torches set beside her, she would unravel all she’d done.’

Homer, The Odyssey, 2.98-10

In Peter Shand’s article ‘If I were Penelope’,[1] he describes Judy Millar’s work as being like the shroud Penelope weaves for Laertes in that Millar’s field of investigation is the making and unmaking of art. I continue to be engaged by this concept of making and unmaking art; by adding and subtracting layers and by covering over and then revealing.

Tapestry and weaving remain as leitmotifs in my work, as does the idea of unpicking an unwanted pattern, a reference from the novel Owls Do Cry[2], however this body of work is concerned with the unravelling. The grid this time contained within the delicate, open weave of the unprimed canvas, or Mull fabric and the unravelling a series of lines and drips to form tangles and tassels that hang loose.

‘Threads’  800 x 950mm – ink, pastel and acrylic on unprimed canvas

‘Shroud 1’  420 x 600mm – ink, pastel, acrylic and Mull fabric on canvas

‘Shroud 2’  420 x 600mm – ink, pastel, acrylic and Mull fabric on canvas

‘Fidelity’  800 x 950mm – ink, pastel and acrylic on unprimed canvas

[1] Peter Shand, ‘If I Were Penelope’ Art New Zealand, 91, (Winter 1999): 60-63, & 87.

[2] Janet Frame, Owls Do Cry (Auckland: Pegasus Press, 1957)