un/conscious

‘un/conscious’ is a large-scale artwork that features a collection of sixteen brightly coloured tactile canvases, creating a kaleidoscopic wall of colour.

The textiles featured are ‘waste’ offcuts from vintage towels that have been donated to the artist by Re/lax Remade, a sustainability focused, Sydney-based fashion label. Each piece of fabric is embedded with the memories of the previous owner, an ode to the generations of families that owned these towels and their memories permeate each fabric remnant. Nostalgic and echoing the childhoods of those who remember the towels from grandma’s home.

The act of creating this work integrates these accumulated memories with those of the designers at Re/lax Remade and now incorporates the memories of the artist. Leaving us with a complex weaving of memories through millions of threads that have been passed through thousands of hands before becoming the work you see today.

The process of creating ‘un/conscious’ took the artist over 6 months and countless pieces of vintage textile offcuts. All the while Jamie-Lee was incubating her first child, finding herself doing what has long been considered ‘women’s work’. A long and rich history of women working with textiles, that is more than just earning a living: it has always been an accessible way of expressing memories, emotions and experiences. “The reality is that, unlike oil paints, some form of needle and thread are the art materials that have been most commonly and widely available to women throughout history. They have given us women, and continue to give, the power to decorate ourselves and our interior environments, and document ourselves in that process.” (No Man’s Land by Stanislava Pinchuk)

Colour is an entity, a portal, a phenomena that arises through the interplay of light and sight. By itself, light has no colour or brightness, it is a series of pulsing waves of electromagnetic radiation that interacts with our neurology in order to create what we see as colour. In a sense we put a little bit of ourselves into each colour as we observe it. So, as you observe this work you will inevitably contribute to the ongoing collection of memory held within each coloured fibre. You will see your own self reflection and those of the community around you woven amongst the endless cotton loops.

Each colour radiates its own chromatic vibration, a potential echo with the power to bring forth a memory and to share a personal message. There is an unspoken intelligence that seems to reach us through colour. In Greek mythology, Iris the Goddess of the rainbow, uses the rainbow as a bridge between heaven and Earth to bring messages from the God’s.

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“I want to share work that invites people into a state of play and delight, a reprieve from the challenges of life. If kids enjoy the work I know I’m doing the right thing… even better if adults do too.”

– Jamie-Lee Garner