In this performance lecture from the artist’s studio, Hannah Gartside will unpick the garments, fabrics, and techniques she uses to assemble sculptures and installations that explore universal human experiences of connection, tenderness, loss, desire, and pleasure. Gartside will share her strategies for working with the physical qualities and emotional content of fabric.

Grounded in technical skills foundational to her previous career as a ballet and theatre costume-maker, Gartside’s artistic practice is invested in listening to found textiles (including worn clothing and fabrics) and responding to their histories and materialities to carefully and painstakingly construct objects and installations that draw our attention to the profound sensuality and subjectivity of our relationship to the physical world.

She will focus on working with worn clothing (including family fabrics of her deceased loved ones), animal fibres, and synthetic fabrics, using techniques including: cutting, shredding, stuffing, wet-felting, and hand-sewing.

The live stream will be availabe to view on the Making Art Work site at 6.30pm AEST. Register here to be sent a reminder.

Knowing Fabric has been commissioned as part of Making Art Work, a new commissioning initiative by the IMA developed to support artists during COVID-19 lockdowns. Making Art Work is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland.