As half of the Vixen textile design duo printer Meredith Rowe made her name by creating beautiful, fashionable fabrics—imaginatively and skilfully wrought wearable art.
Now she has taken a further step, transforming her textiles into exquisite, handmade art pieces, underpinned by a thoughtful and provocative statement about Korean society, which she recently experienced first hand.
Rowe’s solo exhibition at Westspace Gallery arose directly out of her Asialink residency in Korea last year. The works, ten months in the making, were conceived in Korea, the handmade fabrics hand printed in her final six weeks there, then painstakingly hand sewn back home in Melbourne.
Jolitmal handprinted and handsewn linen, silk & felt bust cover, 150 x 23cm 2001 (model Amanda Evans and photo by Virginia Cummins)
The exhibition, named for Buddha’s 2045th birthday last year and occupying two of Westspace’s three galleries, was described by Rowe in her accompanying colour brochure as ‘a notebook, a collection of images and ideas gathered during this experience; both a reaction to the alienation of being a foreigner and a celebration of immersing yourself in a new world where this alienation reawakens you’.
It had four major components, the first, ‘Twenty Pieces of Fabric’, immediately obvious and stimulating: fabric of varying lengths, hand printed silk, ramie, felt and calico, all of which were originally white before being dyed by Rowe. Some lengths comprised a mix of vibrant patterned pieces, some were oversewn with running stitches, pleats or smocking, others decorated with traditional Korean silk knots, one with ‘fur’ knitted from nylon yarn. Catching the eye from the entrance, they hung from the ceiling, swaying gently in the air.
Behind the fabric lengths, along the gallery’s rear white wall, objects were placed singly or in small groups on low, white wall shelves. On the floor in front of each shelf rested a flat, white cushion, each created from several of Rowe’s fabrics.
This was more than an idiosyncratic method of displaying her work.
Rather, it was an effort to recreate in this downtown Melbourne setting a sense of the different way of living she experienced in Korea—of a society in which ritual is an integral part of life, with householders removing their shoes to don slippers as they arrive home, kneeling on just such cushions to eat, to pray.
Close to the gallery entrance, white shelves held rows of ready-made slippers, some reflecting the Korean enjoyment of cartoon characters (Snoopy was prominent) in a range of sizes. Nearby a discreet sign asked visitors to remove their shoes and don slippers before stepping over the beam on the floor which created a barrier between this ‘foyer’ and the exhibition space.
While I was there a few visitors, willing to don slippers already worn by people they didn’t know, complied. Most did not, though perhaps this owed as much to the size and lack of prominence of the sign as to tinea-phobia.
The exhibition’s third component, ‘Jelly Flowers’, displayed on the interior wall opposite the shelves, was a host of vibrant lotus flowers created from the wrappings of food eaten by Rowe during her Korean sojourn—in particular, from the seaweed jelly cups with which she says she developed an obsession.
These were an exceptional use of recycled materials, petals individually shaped and hand rolled, central cotton stamen tipped with red emerging from foil and multicoloured packaging transformed into items of great beauty.
They were, Rowe explained, a reflection on the central importance of the revered lotus flower in Korean life—as her flowers arose from refuse, so the real flowers arise from the ugliness of mud, opening to reveal their great beauty.
In the adjacent, much smaller gallery three, the final component of her show gave a taste of the inspirations for Rowe’s work. A Western table rested on a floor mat made from the vibrant plastic pieces of a Korean child’s playpen. The pieces, each a Korean character, jigsawed together.
Atop the table were placemats made from Rowe’s photographs, her camera used in place of a sketchbook to record images such as streetscapes, a television show, Hello Kitty car seat backs.
Rowe describes them as ‘banal frozen moments’ of the kind we all record and it’s an apt description. They were interesting in much the same way as a tourist’s photograph album, as a glimpse of a different life filled with contradictions and to impart some slight sense of the feeling of foreignness which Rowe experienced.
But it was the objects—mostly clothing accessories—on the wall shelves which were the exhibition’s highlight, both in terms of their highly skilled workmanship and the ideas they expressed.
They were a mix of the old—a scholar’s hat, bags, thimbles, a child’s traditional sock—and new—face masks, a doorknob cover, a mobile phone cover, workmen’s gloves, children’s slippers. All were comprised of a mix of Rowe’s colourful and immaculately hand printed fabrics, some with identifiable motifs such as a temple cookie cutter, crosses (a reference to the neon crosses which light up Seoul’s night-time skyline) a map, instructions for what I later discovered to be opening a jellycup.
Jungja-gwan handprinted silk scholar's hat, 30 x 27cm, 2001 (model Kerry Vojlay and photo by Virginia Cummins)
The counterposing of function and fabric design were at times humorous—for instance, ‘Jungja-gwan’, a layered scholar’s hat whose layers denote rank, was constructed from fine handmade silk, dyed a bright pink and printed with the jellycup motif.
‘Child’s slippers’ were decorated with Australian stamps in place of the manufacturer’s logo.
Several of the accessories, particularly the bags, were decorated with both Rowe’s contemporary prints and traditional Korean knots, made from silk which is constructed as part of the knotting ritual. Rowe studied this ancient, ceremonial art with one of its last exponents and elderly ‘living treasure’.
I know this because Rowe told me. I was fortunate to have visited on an afternoon on which she provided a lengthy explanation and ‘tour’ for friends which I shamelessly gatecrashed.
She’d probably have done the same for me had I asked. But I’d have been out of luck had I visited on an afternoon when she was not at Westspace. So it was a pity this fascinating information, including her descriptions of the foreignness she felt and of being in a small minority, of the importance of ritual and ceremony in Korean culture, of traditional costumes, was not more readily available.
For instance, Rowe explained the origin of the fabrics she used to create her twenty pieces—textiles and social fabric, like cooking and child-rearing, the result of essential, undervalued women’s work. The fine silk is woven on small back looms, always to human body width, always sold in 22 metre lengths and unavailable in any other width because that is what is needed to make a traditional dress.
She described the costumes, their square design ensuring they could always be folded flat, the use of colour, the lack of pockets necessitating small bags like her ‘jumoni’, the use of face masks instead of handkerchiefs, the wide belts which one of her fabric pieces imitated.
It was fascinating and enjoyable, but it was a fluke of timing. The dearth of information was a significant flaw in this otherwise excellent show.
No prices were available to those wanting to buy because Rowe had not made time to calculate them.
Jelly flowers flowers handmade from food packaging, 3-15cm (photo by Virginia Cummins)
Descriptions of the works were all contained on a single typed sheet posted near the door. No copies were available for visitors to carry. This list could not be seen from the wall shelves, so to work out what each object was (some, such as the scholar’s hat and face masks were not immediately obvious) meant going back and forth between list and shelves. For those who had heeded the request to change into slippers, each trip involved changing from shoes to slippers to cross the ‘barrier’.
Perhaps Rowe thought a small plaque above each shelf would have destroyed the illusion that the visitor had stepped into a little corner of Korea, but it would have been extremely helpful.
So, too, would more information about what prompted her work. A scroll or poster outlining her philosophy and the Korean connection, of the kind the National Gallery of Victoria uses throughout its exhibitions, would have been invaluable. As it was there were few clues as to what it was all about.
I had even puzzled about the title and it was not until re-reading Rowe’s brochure for this review that I uncovered the Buddha’s birthday connection.
The brochure itself, a full colour concertina, was very helpful. ‘The work was instinctive,’ Rowe wrote, ‘guided by an interest in social patterns. Without intending it so it turned out to be a metaphor for the social and cultural fabric itself, and a meditation on the experience of being "other".’
But these brochures were piled next to the slippers, each elaborately wrapped around and around with specially printed paper. Their purpose was not immediately clear and no sign invited visitors to take one. What’s more, although the wrapping was no doubt a comment on the extensive use of such wrappings in Korea where, as in Japan, the presentation of a gift is almost as important as the gift itself, it was just too obscure and convoluted. I had trouble opening mine. Most people didn’t bother, preferring to try to figure it out at home. But having the information it contained before or as I looked would have been enlightening.
I wonder how many of those who eventually opened their ‘gift’ and learned so much more about what they had seen wished they could then see it again.
Rowe has much to say and her work alone doesn’t tell the full story. If there’s a next time, let’s hope she tells us all.
