Jean Miles Trilogy of pears detail, canvas work using cottons and beads 25 x 25cm

While contemporary artists are receiving accolades for their re-contextualization of traditional women's crafts, the original crafts that inspire them remain more often than not hidden around the corner, within interior home environments. Traditional Australian crafts, perhaps like many Ethnic and European crafts quite humbly are placed somewhere in colloquial history, far away from gallery environments.

Traditional crafts are indeed generally made with the aim of functioning quite aptly at home. But perhaps it is time to bring them out from behind closed doors and let them see the light of day in a gallery context where they can be seen and appreciated for the skill and beauty they involve. The traditional crafts and the women who produce them provide a solid artistic foundation with growth that produces a wonderful array of visual diversity. Their outcomes represent an eclectic balance that should be brought to public awareness alongside the contemporary shoots that sprout from them. It is a fine line that separates the understanding and production of visual crafts from contemporary artistic practise built around the extension or appropriation of them. Perhaps it is time to redefine the equilibrium of this line.

The title of threads exemplifies a multiplicity of meanings. It can be used to represent this fine line of understanding that separates or even joins the different cultural outcomes. Threads is also the title given to a textile based project that has recently begun between artists from the Contemporary Sculptors Association and practitioners from the Goulbourn Valley West Country Women's Association. Threads will culminate in a series of more than ten single day textile based workshops plus two weekend workshops where traditional craft skills will be taught to any interested practitioners. The tutors will primarily by highly skilled CWA members from around Victoria and they will teach community members and artists alike. These workshops will allow the CWA practitioners to further their skills at high end levels of craft at the same time as teaching artists skills that will allow them to further their skills at the same time as reinterpreting these crafts into artworks. Workshops are evolving over the next 12 months and will include beading, crazy patchwork, crocheting, brazilian embroidery, woollen sculptural animals, felting, stumpwork, blackwork, quilling, knitting, basket making, goldwork and canvas work amongst other specialty crafts.

Artists and craftspeople will furthermore be invited to exhibit visual outcomes, where curators will select works to be exhibited at Shepparton Art Gallery and at Yarra Sculpture Gallery in Oct/Nov 2006. The invitation will be extended to include craft from around Victoria and from other organizations who can equally exhibit objects in a two day expo at the Shepparton Civic Centre coinciding with the exhibitions. The aim for everyone involved is to work towards making or interpreting crafts at the same time as acknowledging cultural diversity and the richness of regional and metropolitan practises.

In terms of visual outcomes, artists and CWA women alike will be invited to address the theme of threads under the banner of making either a literal interpretation of "3 coat hangers" or "a bowl of fruit" in any medium or to conceptualize a reinterpretation of those forms. Traditional crafts will reach the galleries; CWA skill and handiwork will leave the wardrobes and the kitchens to move collectively into the gallery environment alongside the contemporary artworks that evolve from them.

The craftspeople that continuously produce the traditional craft based objects today are often highly skilled and many hold over 50 years of experience working with these crafts. Threads will enable them to further the skills as they work in specialised traditions at the same time as aiding in the resurgence of textiles and craft based skills within contemporary art practise. High quality outcomes and experimental and innovative work are encouraged. With the commitment of the CSA and the Goulbourn Valley West CWA alongside the support from Arts Victoria and The Myer Foundation, this project threads, offers regional women understanding and support within the drought recovery period at the same time in assisting Melbourne based artists to be actively interacting and involved. Materials, tutoring and travel will be highly subsided. Cross cultural exchange between women from regional and metropolitan areas is a highlight. This project furthers its reach by the inclusion of craft based groups from the City of Yarra including Chinese embroidery, Turkish Jewellery, Latin American embroidery and beading, Timorese weaving and Cook Island decorations. This project promises to create an eclectic mix of cultural and artistic outcomes.

It is arguable that the high level of talents and craftsmanship from CWA MEMBERS while having survived several generations so far, is likely to recede over the next 20 or 30 years. It is as if traditional crafts no matter how fruitful the outcome, is a dying generation in its current context while its counterpart as artworks are branching out to be well received in the light of the outside and public world. What is it in social and artistic consciousness that has left the chore of traditional craft at home destined to possibly to end up in opportunity shops? Will any new generation of craft or art survive without this rich chore of older generation women? Threads is one attempt at allowing the women to pass on traditional skills in order for their diversity and vibrancy to stay alive.

The mind may be transported with images and a diverse range of visual outcomes given such a project. Both literal and non literal possibilities will be delicately enlivened. In one breath fine strands of textiles arise in the minds eye and both traditional and contemporary visual crafts spring vividly to mind. In the next breath, threads refer to thought provoking notions and passages of time with links between regional and city based cultures. Combinations of various generations spring to mind. Threads will allow a refreshing acknowledgement and public appearance of the traditional crafts simultaneously with an element of surprise that stems for translating these crafts into artworks.

Looking deeply into the collaboration the diversity of the project, threads seems to take on an unusual stance with a community oriented depth and shifting of the balance that ordinarily makes its way into the context of a gallery.

Notes

To request further details or to be placed on the mailing list for workshops and exhibition events, please contact Elaine Miles on elaine.miles@artdes.monash.edu.au
Donations of materials towards workshops and mentoring are also welcomed.