Means Of Production

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Means of Production Invitation

OPENING RECEPTION: JUNE 8, 7 - 9PM

Artists: 

Amanda McCavour, Lucy Poskitt, Michelle Sirois Silver, Stephanie Symns and Amanda Wood

Through weaving, rug hooking and stitching, five textile artists explore the value, meaning, and metaphorical possibilities of methodically making work by hand in a digital age of increasingly rapid advancement. The title draws on Marx’s theory of alienation, which asserts that our humanity is created through production – essentially we are what we make. Each of the artists has a practice that steadfastly values handwork as a means to process and express ideas about technology and contemporary issues of labor and culture.

Textiles are an integral part of human life along the continuum of birth to death. At birth we are swaddled with a blanket and in many cultures shrouds or costume play a significant role in burial rites. Cloth evokes a unique emotional connection to ritual, memory and the senses. This group of textile artists honours the human connection to cloth through their relationships to textile traditions and the conceptual location of their artworks in dialogue with the history of cloth as cultural artifact. In contrast to the ephemeral nature of the digital world, cloth is tangible but like digital products it does not stand the test of time.