Please join us for a discussion about the project and exhibition Present Tending, showing at ANCA Gallery, March 8—26, 2023.

Present Tending brings together six artists who work with the materiality and histories of cloth and plant colour. Conceived pre-covid, the project has taken many twists, turns and pauses. Initially our plans were to come together in person. The pandemic forced a new methodology: Mayo dyed five metres of cloth for each artist with plants collected from Ngunnawal/Ngambri land. She then posted a length to each artist, with the simple instruction that they use the cloth only in ways useful to their commitments and desires in the home, studio, or elsewhere and to do so without producing unwanted labour.

Cut from the same cloth, the works in Present Tending reveal unaccounted for care-work. During the pandemic many people’s homes were co-opted by employers as people were instructed to work from home. The additional caring responsibilities attached to these new ‘worksites’ affected women and low-income earners most, and were often unaccounted for by employers.

For these artists, the textile is an object and tool of care, a site of resistance or intermediary between the inevitable tensions and challenges of working from home. The range of approaches explored by the artists is a testament to the creative ways artists managed isolation, home-schooling and ongoing employment and financial pressures. The use of natural fibres, dyed with locally sourced plant colour, assists in connecting the artists, and their subsequent audiences, to place, labour and care.

Dr Rebecca Mayo (ANU School of Art & Design), Dr Kylie Banyard (LaTrobe) and artist educators, Sara Lindsay, Ema Shin, Katie West and Ilka White.

Present Tending is showing at ANCA Gallery March 8 - 26, 2023.

This event is supported by the Australian National University Gender Institute.