Exhibition Announcement!

We are excited about our new quilt set ‘Noongar Country: Wetland Glimpses’, comprising 16 small art quilts. The set has attracted attention even before being exhibited – so far we have negotiated four display spaces.

We will launch the set in July in Albany. Why then and there? July includes NAIDOC week so our celebration of Aboriginal culture through the quilts is apposite; and Albany is Noongar country and has lots of wetlands. So if you are in Albany visit:

Museum of the Great Southern, Regency Rd, Albany, July 8-29.

Our other exhibition spaces are:

City of Perth Library, Hay St, in the display cabinets at the entrance, August 21 – November 19.

World Wetlands Day Conference, Cockburn Wetlands Centre, February 2019

Australasian Quilt Convention, March 2019.

We will be offering floor talks and/or presentations at each venue: watch this space for details! The luscious colours in the new heading of this blog are an indication of what is in store – the image is the lower part of a wetlands quilt by Meg Cowey.

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Rotary breakfast talk

This morning (March 14) we had another opportunity to display our Balbuk quilts–this time with Powerpoint slides, but never-the-less the quilts seemed to be appreciated by the Matilda Bay Rotary Group. Also the educational and reconciliation outcomes of the Balbuk project.

We are winding up now for the launch of our new quilt set on Wetlands with Noongar connections. Will advertise where you will be able to see them once the venues are finalised!

Fun at Wireless Hill

WA Inspired Art Quilters had fun ‘animating’ the Machines and Makers Exhibition at Wireless Hill Museum last Sunday (January 7). We organised machine and hand sewing demonstrations, and a sun dying workshop. Visitors were interested and we enjoyed talking with them. The sun dying was a real success!

 Sun-dying outside

 Sewing inside the museum

 

What’s next?

We are on a new project making art quilts with a wetlands theme.  We are looking for venues to display  them so if you have any ideas please respond to this post with a comment! We had a lot of fun in 2017, and hope to sustain this! In summary we exhibited our:

• Balbuk’s Country quilts in the City of Perth library as part of the National Trust Heritage Festival
• Balbuk’s Country quilts in the small quilts category at QuiltWest
• Primary Production, and Salt, Scheme, Strata and Sand quilts at Mundaring Arts Centre
• Salt and Strata quilts in a special groups display at the NZ Quilt Symposium

We also had luck with magazine articles:

• Down Under Textiles, Issue 28, pp. 65-67, Balbuk’s Country, feature article.
• Down Under Textiles, Issue 29, pp. 62-66, Contemporary Artistry, feature article, Primary Production Series
• Australian Patchwork and Quilting Vol 27, no 2, pp. 46-47, Themed Quilts by WA Inspired (Goldfields pipeline), feature article
• Australian Patchwork and Quilting, Bush Tucker, Vol 27, no 12, pp. 78-79, showcase article, in press.
• Australian Patchwork and Quilting, How Would You Interpret ‘Strata’? feature article, Vol 28, no 3, in press.
• Textile Fibre Forum, Interpreting Sand as a Quilt Theme, feature article, Issue 129 in press.

First off in 2018, we will be at Wireless Hill Museum, ‘animating’ the Machines and Makers’ exhibition on January 7, 12-4. The animation will comprise  sun-dying and stitching. Come and talk to us if you are over that way–Wireless Hill is a nice place for a picnic.

 

 

NZ Quilt Symposium

Our group was given space to exhibit quilts at a special exhibition at the symposium, with five other groups. We were very lucky with the spot that we were allocated–in good light at the entry. We took eight quilts from the Salt and Strata series and put up posters with photos of other quilts in those series. Denise and Pat attended and enjoyed many conversations with people who viewed the quilts and who appreciated the strong colours in them.  A challenge for us now is to produce eye-catching quilts for a new series–we are working on it!

 

Active again!

We have been enjoying a break after our exhibition efforts. A quilt-set in a new theme has been started! In the meantime w’ere providing a mosaic of our ‘Strata’ quilts’–mosaics are a new trick we have learnt, but we don’t know how to control which picture goes where.

 

stitched and bound success

Five of our WA Inspired group entered and had works accepted for the juried stitched and bound 2017 exhibition: Hilary Arber, Liz Humphrey, Roberta Chantler, Meg Cowey and Pat Forster. Hilary’s quilt ‘Beach Drift’ has been featured on the promotion for the exhibition including on the cover of the catalogue, with great effect.We enjoyed a delightful day yesterday giving short floor talks about our quilts, together with other exhibitors.

 Beach Drift by Hilary Arber

Exhibition closed!

The quilts in our Mundaring exhibition are now down and packaged for buyers, or safely stored. The next outing for some of them is the NZ Symposium in Christchurch, NZ in October. WA Inspired will exhibit with four other groups at a very nice venue ‘The Piano’ during the symposium. This blog will go quiet now as we are having a rest till September.

Encouraging exhibition feedback

Thank you to everyone who has visited WA Inspired Art Quilters’ exhibitions over the last few weeks, and for the feedback given. Balbuk’s Country has closed now but Mundaring Arts Centre Exhibition runs till June 18.

Several people have expressed interest in the Journal prepared on Balbuk’s Country so a link is provided below. It includes quilt photos for Balbuk’s Country and the history behind the quilts.

JournalBalbuksCountry

 

Mundaring Arts Centre Exhibition

May 6 – June 18. Do come and visit. The quilts are great in the real! Catalogues are on this website under the Primary Production and Sand/Salt/Strata/Scheme tabs. Gallery hours are   TUE – FRI 10AM – 5PM, SAT & SUN 11AM – 3PM. Floor talks are on: May 14, 11am; May 21, 11am; May 26, 11am; June 3, 1pm; June 10, 11am.

Our ‘Balbuk’s Country’ display in the City of Perth Library is also still on – finishes May 18. Some of us will be at the display half an hour before and after the library talks on Fanny Balbuk on May 11, and after the symposium on May 17. For details, search on Balbuk at

https://www.nationaltrust.org.au/explore/?content=ahf_event&ahfdate-search