Fifty years ago today, Australian soldiers were living, fighting and dying on the Korean peninsula. This fiftieth anniversary, which began in 2000, finishes in 2003, but for the families and friends of those who died in Korea, there is no end to the anniversary of the three years of warfare between 1950-53, nor for the Korean people, who now live unwillingly divided in the land where they lived as one culturally unique nation for 4500 years.
In 2000, I was selected for an Asialink Visual Arts/Craft Residency at Kookmin University in Seoul, South Korea. Postponed to 2001, the residency was for four months but I ended staying for seven, and have already returned twice, fascinated by this country the size of Western Victoria with a population of 47 million people, amazed to be a witness to rapid modernization and the everyday clash between the very ancient past and the very apparent future. Living there today it is hard to believe the photos taken at the time of the Korean War, which show a feudal land of traditional agricultural communities in singular mud brick houses.
I work as a textile designer, so during my time in Korea I lectured extensively about textile design and Australian design, and produced several bodies of artwork resulting from the experience of living and working in Korea. Predominantly working with handmade Korean linen, my artwork reflects a fascination for both traditional craft forms and the contemporary elements of global and industrial culture. Korea designates their master craftspeople as National Living Treasures, and I was privileged to meet three of the master textile practitioners, including Kim Hae-Ja, designated Important Intangible Cultural Asset 107 for her knowledge of traditional Korean quilting.
Before leaving Australia, a co-incidental network of past and current neighbours led to me being asked to design a quilt to commemorate the anniversary of the end of the Korean War and the Australians who died serving there. Mrs Nola Gunning contacted me, a former neighbour from my childhood growing up on a farm in Western Victoria, whose children I had gone to primary school with. Her daughter Lynn was now living in Canberra, next door to Mrs Olywn Green, widow of Lt. Col. Charles Green, Commanding Officer of the Third Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment. Mrs Green is a scholar of the Korean War, and wrote the catalogue essay for the exhibition ‘Vagrant Winds: Korea at War 50-53’, an exhibition of photography and memorabilia at the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre in Sydney in 2000, held to commemorate the anniversary of the beginning of the war. She knew that Mrs Gunning was an active member of the Coleraine Sit & Sew Quilting Group, and wanted to commission a signature quilt about the war, following the tradition of quilts as poignant community records of memory, identifying the links between the lives of ordinary people and the grand events which shape them.
All the work I was doing in Korea involved investigating the history of textiles within that culture, so when I discovered that quilting is a very important component of Korean costume, it became an obvious link to the Korean War Commemorative Quilt, a catalyst for my design concept and a path to cultural exchange. For thousands of years Korean winter clothes have been hand quilted by the women in a family, and the piecing together of scraps of cloth is an important component of Buddhist costume and of the local handcrafts. Ancient Buddhist texts define that the ‘gasa’, a cloak worn for monks to collect their alms [in a procession at dawn, monks walk through the city and collect food donated by the faithful so they can eat], was to be made from the soiled and discarded small scraps of cloth found as rags and stitched together into the pattern which symbolised the ordered rows of a rice field, the pattern which also defines the Korean wrapping cloth, a piece of cloth used to wrap gifts in. Thus Korean Buddhist monks and nuns would also traditionally make their own clothes from scraps of cloth leftover from other people, dying them in ink to resemble the colour of ash. This tradition, while one of religious piety, has great similarity to the Australian utilitarian tradition of creating quilts for warmth out of any scraps of fabric that could be found, reusing old blankets and clothing, dressmaking scraps, tailors samples and even the flour bags which were used in Wagga quilts.
From her home studios Kim Hae-Ja teaches the art of Korean quilting, which is a defining feature of traditional Korean clothing, taking ten years of her quarterly workshops before you are sufficiently qualified in all the aspects of this tradition. Korean quilting is quite different to the Western form of quilting; decoration is generally via the lines of stitching and seams rather than via colour, and it is basically the repetition of many parallel lines approximately 3mm apart, created from stitches which are completed one up/one down, a meditative act which results in something reversible and perfect either side. In Western quilting the needle is run through the fabric to achieve several stitches at once, which creates stitches longer on one side than the other, thus the front is different to the back. Generally all Korean quilting is quite thin, two layers of silk or linen with cotton or silk wadding in between.
My design for the Korean War Commemorative Quilt has been inspired by this knowledge, and the actual components of the design are a direct result of attending Kapyong Day, the 50th anniversary service of the largest battle that Australians fought in, at Kapyong, South Korea, in April 2001. For someone of my generation the only mental image I have of the Korean War is the television series MASH, something I know must be unrealistic and obviously at odds with the scene I viewed that day at Kapyong, a place typical of Korean geography with steep mountainous terrain surrounding us on all sides. I was struck by momentousness of the occasion, to see so many Australian and New Zealand and Korean ex-soldiers gathered together, honouring their fellow soldiers and each other, and to envision the nightmare of that battle, in heavy snow and in such difficult terrain.
The quilt design incorporates much symbolic detail, yet it will be quite simple in appearance. The size of a double bed, with a thin cotton wadding filling, produced in a symbolic palette of monochromatic greys, silver, white, black; decoration coming only from the lines of stitching, some small areas of patching, and Honour Roll of names of the 339 who died, which will be the main feature of the quilt. In one section it features the topographical lines of the Korean landscape, simple lines of stitching done in the Korean style and small pieces of fabric layered on top of each other to form a topographical relief map. The refrain from The Last Post will be featured as a symbolic pattern of white spots and lines, abstracting the sheet music into a pattern which meanders across the face of the work, like the way that musical refrain floats on the air, triggering a response for so many who hear it. The piece will be constructed from silk and moshi, handmade Korean ramie [linen] which are the traditional fabrics of Korean costume, handdyed in ink to be the colour of ash, replicating the method and colour of Korean monks clothing, indicating that this work has the spiritual significance of mourning for those who work on it and those who see it.
All these elements incorporate to form a memorial document which talks of sadness, but which through the act of teaching and learning creates a future, forging links between past and present communities, two cultures, different generations, and the importance of personal and public memorial; lest we forget.
Meredith
Rowe graduated from RMIT with a BA in Textile Design in
1991, initially working as a freelance designer and then
forming Vixen Australia with Georgia Chapman, an award-
winning and internationally acclaimed partnership which
carved a niche for textile designer-makers in the Australian
fashion industry. Vixen focused on a hybrid practice spanning
commercial and exhibition work, and committed to hand-production;
a craft aesthetic strangely at odds with the fashion design
industry, but an approach that saw their work cross many
boundaries, from fashion world to art world and back.
After eight years involved in the fashion industry, with
career highlights including being featured in the collection
of the National Gallery of Victoria, touring in exhibitions
nationally and internationally, winning the 1999 Seppelt
Contemporary Art Award, the 1998 Victorian Design Award
and being commissioned to design and manufacture scarves
for the Women’s Formal Official Team Uniform for the
Sydney 2000 Olympics; Meredith left Vixen in 2000 to work
internationally and to investigate new areas within design.
Her interest lies in textile technology and the diverse
role of textile design within contemporary culture.
Last modified 07-May-2003
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