Mary Louise Edwards installation shot from Stained 11 May - 10 June 2006 at Craft Victoria
Entering the studio of artist Mary Louise Edwards you are struck by organized chaos. It's a small room that functions as the nerve centre for a practice that has spanned twenty years. Bowls overflow with small balls of color coded fabric. Thousands of cork disks fight for desk space amongst pins, matches, tools and the ubiquitous radio and cup of tea. It is her place of work, one that she attends daily.
Edwards is almost impossible to categorize 'textile artist, installation artist, craftsperson, painter, maker' are the closest tags for describing the complex visual world being constructed in the quiet suburban studio.
Perhaps Chaos Theory rather than pure chaos is a more appropriate phrase. Regardless of intent, patterns emerge, forms take shape, landscapes are constructed by 'singles cells' of sliced cork. Each piece unique but working to make a whole. It is the perfect example of 'from little things big things grow'.
I first sat down with Edwards as work began for a major solo show at Craft Victoria held in May 2006. Originally planned as one large color field piece Edwards went through many concepts before adjusting the work within the dictates of this challenging space. Long and thin, a rough floor and a bank of windows, it is not the conventional cube the artist was used to.
But it did come with one new and stellar advantage. 'Craft Victoria is primarily an object based gallery and so there was an opportunity to make objects which was exciting to me' said Edwards. Slightly adjusting her practice to approach the space flower motifs appeared as did wall mounted tree like columns and more significantly floor work that came to mark the beginning of a new journey in her practice.
In work that deals with multiples, the mundane (wine cork) is transformed into a kind of building block. Repeated motifs cause a pulse. Stitched together they evoke both the micro and the macro. At first the viewer sees quilts, flags, stitches, rhythms and then as the eye adjusts, landscapes emerge and then back again to basic DNA structures-theory in the chaos.
Edwards doesn't get caught up in pattern explaining 'It's more organic than that. I'm happy with the unevenness of the material. I think that's where the beauty lies, in its imperfect quality.'
She is keenly aware that the evidence of process is there. Cutting, sorting, categorizing are the basic tools for creating the work. Stitching cork disks to each other to form grids, each one slightly different, none completely square they echo the looseness of quilts she saw the tribal women of India creating which has had a long lasting effect on her work.
Edwards is no stranger to Craft Victoria. The previous year she had participated in the exhibition Ragged Edge that explored themes of recycling and preciousness. Edwards created a floor to ceiling installation of columns of chuck super wipes that had color graded fabric balls and cork slices attached.
Edwards was no stranger to the humble dishcloth, having created a masterful wall piece as part of the prestigious Cecily and Colin Rigg Award at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2004. But this was the first time Edwards had used cork as a material and it was to prove to be the beginning of what would become a major body of work.
Material of course is all important and is usually the starting point for the work. It may be colour, texture or mass but it is almost universally domestic. This is not to be read as proto feminist but it certainly stems from 'home use and work'.
Cork was something that Edwards had wanted to work with for a long time. Having built up quite a collection and having slowly reached a point where she could see the possibilities in the material, she looked for ways for not only using it for decorative purposes. She used her instincts as a painter and her long standing interest in abstraction and minimalism. Edwards responded to the material as a tool. Cork disks as a new kind of brush to construct the image.
Exhibitions usually mark an end point for work. The Craft Victoria show was a crystallization of past ideas but also a public declaration of new intent. Almost as soon as the work was installed Edwards was looking ahead, problem solving and continuing on the journey "I began thinking about where the work could go from there" she said "It seemed open to so many possibilities, it was exciting."
Like many makers it's been a complex journey thus far. From art school, teaching, traveling and curating there is always been a keen engagement with the world.
Edwards faces her artistic future in a mindful way, tackling her Masters in 2007 while continuing to participate in group shows and the possibility of another solo show later in the year. It will be an opportunity to tease out the ideas that have informed the work over the past decade. Picking up where she left off from her art school training with ideas of landscape, exploring washes and marks and the history behind the dot (a potent marker in her work).
Edwards turned 40 this year and has marked it as a victory. Engaging with her practice full time and making the making her life priority. Self described as 'a mid career artist' it seems clear that for Edwards, this is just the beginning.
