Kylie Banyard, Touching gazania, 2023 , oil and acrylic on turmeric and eucalyptus dyed canvas, 168 x 137cm

Kylie Banyard, Soft pause (medium), 2023, acrylic and applique on canvas and mistletoe dyed hemp/cotton gifted by Rebecca Mayo, 168cm x 137cm

Kylie Banyard, Soft pause (small) 2, 2023, acrylic on canvas and mistletoe dyed hemp/cotton gifted by Rebecca Mayo, 60cm x 60cm

Present Tending, 2023, install image

Cut from the same cloth, the works in Present Tending reveal snippets of unaccounted for care-work. During the pandemic many people’s homes were co-opted by employers instructing people to work from home. The additional caring responsibilities attached to these new ‘worksites’ affected women and low-income earners most, and were often not accounted for by employers.1

The process of dyeing the fabric had slipped my mind. Last week, the memory of huge dye-pots on my tiny balcony, and swathes of fabric hanging over our landing and brushing against our dining table returned. The image of these swathes returning to Canberra--now re-shaped and transformed by the touch of my fellow artists and their lives--provoked a rush of anticipation. Their work carries imprints and stains born from my efforts. While our collaboration has been sequential and sporadic, taking place over distance, our touch and labour come together through the fabric as a record of our care.

Ema Shin and her two young children used the cloth as a surface to work upon. Together they created Playmat for peace of mind. The cloth offered Shin a way to fill endless days while playing with her children during Melbourne’s long lockdowns. One half maps the pent-up energy in the children’s mark making. Delicately vigorous pencil marks are punctuated by impressions of their little hands and fingers. These prints suggest a momentary pause in the action as their bodies press into the cloth. On the other half of the mat Shin uses Sashiko embroidery to stitch three squares. While representing a conversation between Shin and her children, the playmat provokes broader questions of labour. The playful energy of the children’s marks is echoed quietly in Shin’s embroidered lines, revealing the delicate balance between caring for children and ourselves.

Katie West requested that before dyeing her piece, I first twist it using a method of string making which she described to me in an email. With my son’s help, I twisted the 4 metres of fabric, allowing its tension to wrap around and spring back on itself. It was surprisingly physical. This method is a sort of tie-dye, where much of the fabric is protected from the dye by its densely twisted folds. West wanted to use the cloth to reconnect with her practice. Her busy career had meant a year of project managing, and she wanted time to pause and sit with the intentions of her practice. She wrote in an email, ‘I’ve been embedding string around the edge of the fabric, made from the pile of fabric offcuts in my studio. It seemed like a good idea to continue with the motion of string, like the way it was dyed. This project has really allowed me to sit with that simple action. Which I’m really grateful for.’ 2

Kylie Banyard used her cloth, dyed with mistletoe, to turn our attention to touch. On daily walks, she and her 6-year-old son commune with plants, photographing each other gently touching them. The act of touching or being touched became charged during the pandemic: handshakes became elbow bumps, and communal surfaces became danger zones. Banyard lives on Dja Dja Wurrung Country where lockdowns kept them close, but not confined, to home. Plants move on the wind, on the bodies of other life, and through human intent, yet—essentially—they are anchored in place. Mistletoe binds to host trees, its haustorium enabling exchange. Like the placental connection between parent and baby, Banyard’s paintings show us the warmth of this reciprocity, and how these small acts of care between plant, child and parent can foster new ways of being in the world.

Ilka White initially wanted to use the fabric to make new clothes for herself. Her deep concern for the planet, and the ethics she adheres to in response to this, means that she rarely purchases clothes, and only if they are secondhand. As time went on, and her online weaving and textile courses flourished during lockdowns, she instead decided to create dye and woven rag samples. She wrote in an email that she found the brief difficult, ‘in that the directive to make no extra work for myself is counter to my deep habit of stretching myself too thin by going at everything 110% all the time.’i Like Shin’s work, this shows the tension many of us experience between self-care and our responsibility to others. As she wrote, ‘Interesting that I began with braiding a sample for workshops (primary income), then the dye experiments I wanted to carry out anyway, and only last the spun thread roots, which is really what I'd like to explore 'artistically' and technically, but it's very slow, and somehow seems non-essential, despite making my heart sing.’3

The joyous yellow dye of Kurrajong leaf and oxalis flowers in Sara Lindsay’s work also makes the heart sing. Returning to yellow reconnected Lindsay with the work she had been making with a community of women in Portugal. A residency cut short by the pandemic. The four pieces step us through the preparation of warp and weft, and finish with an exquisitely woven piece that holds strength and our attention. The pile of rope incorporate my piece of cloth. Plaited in eight strands, rather than creating a flat woven surface, this technique forms a strong rope with a square profile. Made for another work, shown elsewhere last year, I followed our rules to use the cloth for existing commitments.

We approached the brief according to our desires and responsibilities. We attempted to find space to return to process and intention. Across the exhibition rope, thread, weave, stitch and colour shift and reconfigure. The strength and fragility of cloth and fibre is a material demonstration of our need for collective and reciprocal care, and also to question for whom and how this care is delivered.

1. Fiona Jenkins and Julie Smith, "Work-from-home during COVID-19: Accounting for the care economy to build back better," The economic and labour relations review: ELRR 32, no. 1 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1177/1035304620983608.

2. Katie West email correspondence with the author, 28 March, 2023

3. Ilka White, text message with the author, March 7, 2023

Rebecca Mayo, 2023