Art

Books, the best thing since sliced bread

Published by Anne-Marie Van de Ven 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

(left) Hand-drawn Alphabet book handmade by William Harrison, Australia, 1894. 97/132/1 (right) E R Boyce, Beginning to Read, England, 1950s. 2007/108/1 Collection:Powerhouse Museum

In this National Year of Reading, it is appropriate that the Powerhouse Museum mounts an exhibition which celebrates excellence is Australian book design and publishing. While the Museum collection contains hundreds of books, including the two children’s books illustrated above (one hand made in Australia by 13 year old William Harrison for his niece in England, the other published in England but used in Australian schools), it holds very few winning books from the Australian Publishers Association (APA) annual Book Design Awards (BDA).
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What does a curator really do in a day?

Published by Min-Jung Kim 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

Portrait of Min-Jung Kim, Curator of Asian Arts & Design, Powerhouse Museum, Photo by Sotha Bourn

People often ask me what curators do. Usually my answer is “we research, collect, document and display objects.” However, this answer doesn’t seem to satisfy people who wonder what really goes on behind the scenes in the museums and galleries.

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Sydney Mardi Gras: a daring, dazzling and defiant display of difference

Published by Anne-Marie Van de Ven 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

96/305/2 'Cotton Blossom' costume designed, made and worn by Ron Muncaster, for 1994 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. Collection: Powerhouse Museum

Over the next 4 weeks, if the rain abates and the sun shines, the city of Sydney will come to life as 1000s of men and women fly into Sydney from around Australia and the world for the 2012 Sydney Mardi Gras which kicked off last Sunday with the annual Victoria Park Fair Day. This festival follows close on the heels of its New Orleans counterpart.

The Powerhouse Museum‘s collection includes a number of objects related to this internationally significant Sydney event, including David McDiarmid’s iconic poster for the 1988 Mardi Gras which places Australia on top of the world.

95/339/10 Poster designed by David McDiarmid for 1988 Sydney Gay Mardi Gras. Gift of Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras Limited, 1995. Collection: Powerhouse Museum

The design of this and other Mardi Gras posters captures something of the exuberance and the spectacular costume and float designs associated with the Mardi Gras parade.

This year Mardi Gras celebrates its 35th anniversary by welcoming the return of Kylie Minogue and singer/songwriter Sam Sparrow. Both will perform at Mardigrasland, the bejewelled party environment set to take over Sydney’s Entertainment Quarter for the final days of the 2012 party season. As part of Mardi Gras’ earlier 20th anniversary celebrations, the Museum mounted an exhibition titled Absolutely Mardi Gras: costume and design of the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras (1997).

The 2012 Mardi Gras program is packed with events like the Fair Day, Drag Races, a Youth Festival, Pool Party, etc but its the Mardi Gras Parade (7.45 to 10pm, 3 March) and the After-Parade Party at Mardigrasland (10pm -8am, 3-4 March) which form the key spots on the calendar for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersexed communities to get together to celebrate differences and commonalities with friends, family and community supporters.

95/172/1 Costume designed by Peter Tully, for 1990 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. Collection: Powerhouse Museum

Peter Tully (1947-1992) the designer of the 1995 Mardi Gras costume illustrated above was creative director for Mardi Gras from 1982-1986. Under his tenure, the Mardi Gras workshop was founded and the Sydney Mardi Gras transformed from a political march to a cultural event. Tully and Ron Muncaster (1936- ), were two of Mardi Gras’ most spectacular costume designers. Muncaster’s ‘Cotton Blossom’ costume for the 1994 Parade is illustrated at the top of this post.

98/173/6 and 95/339/3-1, Preparatory collage (on left) by David McDiarmid for the 1990 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras poster (right). Collage, gift of the Estate of the late David McDiarmid, 1998; Poster, gift of Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras Limited, 1995. Collection: Powerhouse Museum

The Museum’s collection also includes the original artwork that is a conceptual collage for the 1990 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. This poster was also designed by David McDiarmid (1952-1995).

The Museum’s Mardi Gras collection has been developing over a 25 year period, mainly as gifts of the organisers, the artists or their family and friends. These wonderful objects shine a light on the history of Sydney Mardi Gras and the aspirations and concerns of the Mardi Gras organisers and participants. The poster collection includes all Mardi Gras posters from 1981 to 1998, but we are still missing the three earliest posters (1978, 1979 and 1980) and have also not yet acquired the posters from 1999 through to 2012. If readers have copies of any of these missing posters in good condition, especially the earlier designs, and be willing to donate them to the collection, please contact the curator at annem@phm.gov.au or 92170161.

Post by Anne-Marie Van de Ven

Hand-made Christmas cards

Published by Anne-Marie Van de Ven 1 Comment Tags: , , .

Whipbird Christmas card, designed and hand-made by Suzanne Annand, 2011

Every year, around this time of the year, an envelope arrives on my desk which brings with it, pleasure and delight. This year, in response to the emerging community interest in the ‘hand-made’ (demonstrated in part by the enthusiastic response we’ve received to the Museum’s international Love Lace competition and exhibition), I thought I’d share some of this joy and delight with readers of the Museum’s ‘Inside the Collection’ blog.

This year the special envelope contained a decorative little hand-made cut-paper ‘Whipbird’ (above) with a glittering diamante eye! It had a metallic string thoughtfully attached so that the bird could be hung as a Christmas decoration. The card is the latest in a long running series of hand-made Christmas greeting cards that Suzanne Annand (nee O’Reilly) has been making since she was 8 or 9 years old, and one of a series that Suzanne has been sending to Museum curators since we first met Suzanne and Tony Annand in 1990, when the Museum acquired the Douglas Annand design archive.

Sheep, Christmas stocking, koala and gumleaf, and black swan Christmas card desgins, hand-made by Suzanne Annand, 1990-2010

For these cards, Suzanne draws inspiration from the things she sees around her – the whipbird, cockatoo and brush turkey were regular visitors to her garden in St Ives, the lizard was seen on a trip she and Tony took to Central Australia, the King parrot was seen while sitting on the veranda at Napoleon Reef, 18km east of Bathurst, the sheep is wrapped in wool from the shearing shed at their property at old Bredbo (now Jerangle).

Lizard Christmas card, Suzanne Annand

To create these highly personalized and appealing Christmas card designs, Suzanne uses readily available materials like coloured paper, tissue and card, diamantes and sequins, holographic stickers, metallic ribbons and threads, and sometimes natural ‘found’ objects like the dry gum leaf. Some are concertina format, others folded, but mostly each is shaped into an easily recognised form.

Penguin, Christmas tree, boomerang and cockatoo Christmas cards, designed and hand made by Suzanne Annand, 1990-2010

The materials are combined using simple techniques like paper cutting, origami folding, crumpling, knotting and threading, gluing, over drawing and hand painting, in an intuitive process which leads each year to a delightful new design.

Suzanne attributes some of her inspiration to the privilege of watching, and sometimes even helping, her father-in-law, Douglas Annand work. Annand is renowned for skilfully integrating a hand-made aesthetic into his unique and usually very sophisticated commercial artworks and designs like his iconic Qantas x Australia poster of 1972 (which Suzanne watched him create with coloured Letraset strips) or the memorable ANTA Black Swan poster design of 1954, which has obviously directly provided inspiration for Suzanne’s black swan Christmas card (above).

I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing and reading about Suzanne Annand’s delightful designs. Thank you Suzanne for making Christmas each year just a little bit more charming and delightful with your hand-made cards! Wishing you, and our readers, all the very best for Christmas and the New Year – from all the staff in the Museum’s Design and Society curatorial department.

Santa stuck in a spider web Christmas card, designed and hand-made by Suzanne Annand, 1990-2010

All card images courtesy of Suzanne Annand
Post by Anne-Marie Van de Ven

Freeman Brothers Studio – Large Format Photographs

Published by Geoff Barker 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Unidentified man, from collodion negative, Freeman Brothers Studio, 1871-1880,Powerhouse Museum, H8504-22

Over the last couple of months I have been working on a previously uncatalogued collection of large format, 50.8 cm x 44.5 cm, glass plate negatives donated to the Powerhouse Museum in 1969. The 28 collodion portraits were found in a chest in our stores at Castle Hill and have been identified as all being originally taken by the Freeman Borthers Studio here in Sydney. We are currently conserving and cataloguing the photographs but hope to be posting them onto flickr commons by the end of the year for researchers to use.

The Freeman Brother Studio lays claim to being the longest running studio in Australia. It was established as the ‘Freeman Brothers and Wheeler’ by William Freeman and his brother James in George Street in 1854; it was still running nearly 150 years later. James was the more experienced of the two having worked in Richard Beard’s gallery in Bath before coming to Australia and was certainly instrumental in the success with which they plied their trade in Sydney.[1]

One of the keys to their success was their continual upgrading of equipment and premises to deliver the latest techniques. As a result they attracted the cultural elite of Sydney to their studios where they were photographed using the techniques of the day. Thus surviving examples can be found as daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, collodion glass plates, flexible sheet negatives all of which were then used to make albumen, gelatin and platinum prints on card, glass, and paper.

In 1864 the brothers undertook a major renovation of their studio which opened to the public in January 1865. Here they claimed … the most artistic arrangements in the distribution of light and shadow have been effected in their Gallery. In carrying out these alterations, Messrs. Freeman Brothers have availed themselves of the very best and latest improvement in the construction of a Photographic Studio, which have been forwarded them from home, “and which they have adapted to the requirements of ‘ the climate according to the dictates of their experience. By a simple and beautiful arrangement, any kind of light can be thrown on the sitter, to suit the varieties or dress or complexion, so that the sunniest effects of a Lawrence or a Reynolds can be obtained, varying down to the most somber and effective tones of a Rembrandt. These remarks Messrs. Freeman wish apply to all the varieties of Photographic Portraiture, from the largest style adapted to Photography down to the universally popular Carte de Visite. While announcing the above important improvements, Messrs. Freeman wish to recall the attention of the public to their beautiful Sutton’s Panoramic Apparatus from the camera, of which they have now a splendid and varied collection of Views of Sydney and its neighborhood …[2]

In January 1867 James Freeman went to England leaving his brother and their partner Victor A. Prout to take control of the business.[3] Why James left is unclear, perhaps illness or an argument but it was clearly unexpected for it was February before the official notice of his retirement from the studio of ‘Freeman Brothers and Prout’ was published in the papers. From this date William and Victor Prout took over the formal management under the name of ‘Freeman and Prout’.[4]

In 1868 the studio acquired over 20,000 negatives from the demise of Dalton Brothers, one of Sydney’s other pre-eminent studios. It turns out the acquisition was not just photographs for in advertising this acquisition they also called attention to the tinted and coloured cards and miniatures produced by Miss Hunt, … for so long favourably known while in Mr. Dalton’s employment …. Miss Hunt must have greatly added to the studio for the surviving coloured work from Dalton Studio ranks among the best produced in this period in Australia.[5]

James Freeman’s retirement appears to have been accompanied by a desire to return to England for in 1868 both brothers returned to there. This arrangement lasted only for a few years until William returned to manage the Sydney studio after the death of James in 1870. The studio suffered a huge blow in November 1871 when a fire on the premises destroyed their entire stock of negatives, including those acquired from Dalton Studio’s.[6]

In 1890 Freeman Brothers passed to William Rufus George who managed the studio until his son Alfred took over in 1903. Harold Cazneaux worked for the studio from 1904 to 1918, a period which saw them embrace a more informal style of portraiture and wedding photography. During the depression the studio was in competition with the street photographers who would snap passers by in the street. Valentine Waller who managed the business though this period was instrumental in lobbying for the State Government to bring in the regulation and registration of this form of photography in 1937. The company continues to survive and evolve moving to digital photography in 2003.[7]

The scale of their enterprise did not seem to affect the quality of the work they produced; in fact the studio from its inception spared no effort in touching up, and printing, their photographic prints. This combination of high quality work and patronage by the elite of Sydney makes their early work excellent examples of nineteenth-century Australian photography, illustrated by their winning silver and bronze medals at the London International Exhibition in 1862.

References
Advertisement, The Sydney Morning Herald, Tuesday 3 January 1865, page 8
Alan Davies, Freeman Studio in the Picture Gallery, exhibition catalogue, State Library of New South Wales, 2003
Advertisement, The Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday 2 May 1868, page 1
Notices, The Sydney Morning Herald, Tuesday 12 February, 1867, page 1
Notices, The Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday 2 May 1868, page 1
Government Notices, The Sydney Morning, Saturday 11 November 1871, page 2

——————————————————————————–

[1] Alan Davies, Freeman Studio in the Picture Gallery, exhibition catalogue, State Library of New South Wales, 2003
[2] Advertisement, The Sydney Morning Herald, Tuesday 3 January 1865, page 8
[3] Notices, The Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday 2 May 1868, page 1
[4] Notices, The Sydney Morning Herald, Tuesday 12 February, 1867, page 1
[5] Advertisement, The Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday 2 May 1868, page 1
[6] Government Notices, The Sydney Morning, Saturday 11 November 1871, page 2
[7] Alan Davies, Freeman Studio in the Picture Gallery, exhibition catalogue, State Library of New South Wales, 2003

David Boyd (1924-2011)

Published by Anni Turnbull 0 Comments Tags: , , .

92/1446 Earthenware bowl by David and Hermia Boyd, Melbourne , 1955. Collection: Powerhouse Museum

David Boyd died aged 87 on November 10 2011.

Born into the Boyd family, who have been renowned for their artistic talents, David Boyd was a painter but was known for his ceramics, learning originally from his father Merric Boyd.
Working with his wife Hermia (1931-2000), during the 1950s they had a prolific period producing ceramics, running studios, exhibiting widely and travelling and working in Italy England, Spain and France. In 1956, Boyd and his wife became widely known as leading Australian potters. They introduced new glazing techniques and potter’s wheel use in shaping sculptural figures. The Museum is fortunate to have a small collection of David and Hermia’s earthen and stoneware work.

92/1573 Vase, earthenware, David and Hermia Boyd, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, c. 1956 Collection: Powerhouse Museum

From 1967 no more pots were made, David continued painting and Hermia with sculpture.

Reference
The Crafts Movement in Australia: A History by Grace Cochrane
University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 1992

History Week: Rice bowls – food, memory and tradition

Published by Anni Turnbull 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Bowl, oxidised steel/silver / gold / bronze / 'odong' in 'choum ibysa' technique, made by Joungmee Do, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 1999 'choum ibysa' Photography Marinco Kojdanovsk:i Powerhouse Museum .

Memories and food are often wrapped up together, a well known example is that of Marcel Proust, his Aunt Léonie and her lime blossom madeleines.

Rather than madeleines, Joungmee Do, a Korean-Australian artist, uses the concept of the rice bowl to explore her own personal memories and meanings associated with food and tableware, in the context of Korean culture and tradition. Rice is a staple food and culturally significant in Korea, and the rice bowl is not just a functional object. Of her work, Bowls, Do says,

The concept and aesthetic style of these bowls was influenced by the Korean daily utensil, the rice bowl …When I started making these bowls, I was thinking about my childhood memories, which are linked to the idea of the rice bowl. Personally a bowl not only acts as a container for objects, but also symbolizes a receptacle for the thoughts of myself or someone else.”

Do created ‘Bowls’ from oxidised steel inlaid with gold, silver, bronze and odong (a copper-gold alloy) wire, using the traditional Korean metal craft technique of jjoum ipsa (or choum iybsa). In this process, the artist uses a chisel and chasing hammer to create closely spaced indentations across the entire surface of the object in horizontal, vertical and diagonal directions. The resulting surface of the object has the appearance of woven fabric. Metal wire can then be inlaid into the chiselled surface to create a pattern.

Bowls (detail of male bowl), Joungmee Do,1998. Photo: Marinco Kojdanovski : Powerhouse Museum

‘Bowls’ was created as a pair, one male and one female, in the way that Korean rice bowls are conventionally presented. The male rice bowl has a domed lid covering the bowl, and both the lid and bowl are densely covered in intricate inlaid patterns, with a blue-black oxidised steel background.

Bowls (detail of female bowl), Joungmee Do,1998. Photo: Marinco Kojdanovski: Powerhouse Museum

The female rice bowl has a hole in the centre of its lid, and is also decorated with inlaid wire against an oxidised steel background. However, the female rice bowl is less ornately decorated than the male, emphasising the fabric-like chiselled surface texture.

The inlaid patterns used by Do were inspired by Joseon dynasty bojagi, or wrapping cloths. In the strict Joseon society, wrapping cloths were a way in which women could creatively express their respect for the recipient and love and wishes for their family. Wrapping cloths were used in many different ways, to wrap, cover, carry or store objects. A specific example, sang po, were used to cover food or food tables (Kim Kumja Paik 1998: 13, 16-18).

Through the making process of ‘Bowls’, Do was able to bring together personal memories and Korean culture and traditions, combining the personally significant form of the rice bowl, the ipsa technique and the bojagi style decoration. Do says,

“When I was practicing the iybsa technique, each chisel mark and hammer stroke proved equal to every single line of stitching in a wrapping cloth. The feelings involved in the chisel mark or stitching line were very similar, and this united and transcended the past and the present.”

You will be able to see these bowls in the upcoming exhibition, Spirit of jang-in: treasures of Korean metal craft, opening on 27 October 2011 and running until 12 February 2012.

Alysha Buss, Assistant Curator, Spirit of jang-in: treasures of Korean metal craft

References

Do, Joungmee, Artist Statement, unpublished manuscript.

Kim, Kumja Paik, 1998, ‘Profusion of colour: Korean costumes and wrapping cloths of the Choson dynasty’, in Roberts, Claire and Huh, Dong-hwa (eds), Rapt in colour: Korean textiles and costumes of the Choson dynasty, Powerhouse Publishing, Sydney, pp 10-18.

Science Underground: Exotic Theatre of the South Seas

Published by Margaret Simpson 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

85/1042 French children’s toy theatre, “La Pleine Mer” (The Open Sea), 1836, showing the three main elements, a sea background, waves in the centre and tropical vegetation foreground. Collection: Powerhouse Museum

After working at this Museum for decades I still find it breathtaking uncovering the treasures we have buried away down in our vaults. An academic from New Zealand emailed me to have a look at a French children’s toy theatre, “La Pleine Mer” (The Open Sea). I vaguely knew about it but never got it all out. What an amazing and incredibly rare object. You can think of it as natural history and French exploration colliding with education and entertainment for children.

The theatre has 27 printed and hand-coloured lithographic cardboard pieces with scenes set in the South Pacific. The backdrop has two French ships under sail, the middle ground a vaudeville-style group of five waves to give a bit of depth and a foreground of lush tropical vegetation around a reef battered by breakers.

The theatre, which was made J. Pintard, Rue Saint-Jacques, Paris, in 1836, has 6 scripts (in French) and lithographs produced by Charles Letaille. The idea was that an adult or older child read the script while younger children slid in or attached a number of loose pieces including boats and individual figures inserted into the scene as directed in the play.

Collection Powerhouse Museum

This all sounds fairly standard for a children’s toy theatre until you look carefully at the content of the script, which we’ve had translated. They give the most amazing and exotic descriptions of maritime adventures and aspects of Australia, New Zealand, the Solomon Islands and New Guinea in the 1830s which couldn’t be more further removed from the lives of the wealthy French children for whom it was made.

One play, “The Whale” describes a whale hunt and tells children about the uses of whale products (whale rib bones for umbrellas and whale fat boiled on board in large vats for oil). It concludes with the gruesome description of the crampon-wearing sailors climbing over the carcass of the whale tied to the side of the ship to remove the ribs, skin and fat.

Detail of a scene from the toy theatre’s “The Shark” play. Collection: Powerhouse Museum

Another one, “The Shark” begins with a deceptively tranquil description of a ship becalmed in the hot tropics. The pace picks up quickly with nail biting anticipation as it is revealed that the ship’s master is repeatedly diving from the ship hauling himself up on a rope to cool off from the heat while a short distance away a shark’s fin creates a “frothing shimmering wake”. Climbing into a small boat, the sailors go to his rescue. Gripped with fear they “could all foresee the struggle that was about to take place between themselves and the shark; a terrible struggle with a man as the contest”. Ironically, the victim in the play ends up being the 16-foot shark which is split open by the ship’s cook. In a play which initially evokes terror the mood is transformed into humour when the sailors discover that a man’s otter-skin hat belonging to the ship’s doctor is inside the shark’s stomach. (Clothes and belongings hung over the side of ships were regularly eaten by sharks).

Inspiration for theatre’s “The Shark” scene was taken from John Singleton Copley’s 1778 painting “Watson and the Shark” in the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Image: Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington

The really interesting thing about the lithographic images and the content of the plays can be traced to paintings, books and journals of the period. According to Louise Mitchell, a former Powerhouse Curator, who wrote about the theatre in her article “La Pleine Mer Sailing over a cardboard sea” in “The Australian Antique Collector”, in 1988, the lithograph depicting New Holland natives tumbling from their capsized canoe while spearing fish, can be traced to an illustration by the Scottish engraver and miniaturist, John Heaviside Clark (c.1777-1863). Clark had never seen Australian aborigines but adhered to the popular European imagery of them as being noble and savage sportsmen. The illustration appeared in a book published in London in 1813 with the title “Field sports … of the Native Inhabitants of New South Wales”. The shark attack lithograph was derived from the well-known American romantic horror-painting of 1778 by John Singleton Copley (1738-1815) “Watson and the Shark”.

In keeping with most toymakers of the period, the theatre’s manufacturer, Pintard produced a variety of toys and related material aimed at educating children in art, geography, scripture, history and natural history. This theatre looked at navigation, maritime life, exploration, geography and the people of the Pacific. Advertising his stock at the conclusion of the “La Pleine Mer” script, he claimed that the moral teaching in its purest form is the basis of all these little educational works. Not only is this toy probably one of the earliest in our collection directly related to Australia but the stories, the humour, the melodrama and images are as fresh today as they were in 1836.

Love Lace International Lace Award and Exhibition: creating the shadows

Published by Anni Turnbull 2 Comments Tags: .

Art and shadows from the Love Lace International Lace Award and Exhibition: Image: Powerhouse Museum

When you walk through the Love Lace exhibition its apparent how important lighting is to the successful display of these works. The Museum electrician Peter Hermon says

This was a unique exhibition to work on, we had more time to work on the lighting (and wiring) and the nature of the work was different, shadows were really important and the lighting needs more particular.

'Garden Party' at the entrance to LoveLace, Image :Powerhouse Museum

“In lighting Garden Party, the artwork at the entrance I stared working on the lighting idea based on a photo and planned to light the work from behind with a complicated rig I had built. That became obsolete when the object turned up. I put the lighting in from above after talking to the artist.”

Peter felt a great responsibility to get the lighting right, as he says:

When its somebody’s art the responsibility is higher, its double sided you have an obligation to show their work in all its beauty, but also you affect the way people view it. That doesn’t sit so easily, I’m changing the way people see their art.”

Another World Wide Web (2011) Image: Powerhouse Museum

In lighting the work Another World Wide Web (2011), Peter says ” I like that the lights are brighter in some places, so it changes the yellow, in some places the colour is much more intense.”
Peter has found it hard to say which of the artworks he likes the most, some provided real challenges to light like Jenny Pollacks work A Brief History of Time. Peter explains:
“Her work was created to be viewed from both sides. Our exhibition space didn’t allow that. The artist ideally wanted the work lit from behind, which would then fade out and also create a silhouette. Seeing the work was about a garden and there are small trees on top of the paper I have created the effect of the sun, rising and setting. One light creates a dull wash over the work and then three lights progressively get further away like the angle of the sun.”

When asked about nominating a favorite work Peter said he found that difficult, but did like the ones with defined shadows because that gave him more to work with.

“One I liked in particular is located in an alcove, its a lace face, with a serious shadow behind it.” Peter created a unique way to light this work Marraine’s Memory an artwork about memory loss in the aged.
“I had to design a way to coordinate the light and a mirror. By just pointing the light down, you couldn’t get a good enough angle. Now the lighting goes into a mirror and the light on the object comes from the reflection.”

Love Lace Exhibition Image: Powerhouse Museum

As Peter says “the best part of working on any exhibition is the collaboration”.*
*From an interview with Peter Hermon 9th August 2011

Love Lace International Lace Award and exhibition: behind the scenes

Published by Kate Chidlow 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

'Cermony' by Noelle Hamlyn, Gowns (6) and bonnets (6): cotton and silk embroidery and smocking on Japanese gampi tissue, 700 x 570 mm (largest). Image Powerhouse Museum

Much work has been going on in the Conservation department in preparation for the upcoming Love Lace International Lace Award and exhibition. There are some wonderful pieces in the exhibition and the variety of materials is amazing. Each object requires its own special display support. Rebecca Ellis has been making supports for some very delicate paper christening gowns and bonnets that will be suspended off the display wall. The artist, Noelle Hamlyn, has created the gowns out of Japanese gampi tissue and decorated them with cotton and silk embroidery.

Conservator Rebecca Ellis filing the stainless steel support rods

The support rods with their padding, ready for hanging.

Ian Scott-Stevenson has made small, stainless steel hangers that will protrude from the display wall. Rebecca has covered the shoulder section of the hanger with dacron padding, covered in silk. This will protect the garment and give it extra support whilst it is on display. The bonnets will be displayed on moulded acrylic attached to a stainless steel rod.

A close-up of a very fragile sleeve of one of the christening gowns.

Gosia Dudek and Nadia McDougall have been working on another artwork called ‘One Echidna’ by Christine McMillan. The quills, which came from a road kill incident, have been made into a beautiful piece of art. Ian cut a piece of acrylic slightly smaller that the outside edge of the object. Gosia then hand drilled 60 sets of holes into the acrylic.

Conservator, Gosia Dudek attaching the echidna quill object to it's acrylic backing.

Gosia and Nadia secured the object to the acrylic by tying very fine nylon threads over the thicker echidna quills and through the drilled holes. Each thread was knotted four times and in case one stitch came loose, another thread was also used in the same set of holes. The process has ensured that the weight is distributed throughout the object, which allows it to be displayed upright.

Sculpture 'One Echidna' by Christine McMillan. echidna spines, linen thread and glue and an animation which records the image made by light passing through the work. 700 mm (diam), 3.05 min (duration) Image Powerhouse Museum