YOU'RE INVITED: Official Opening

PLIABLE PLANES | Expanded Textiles & Fibre Practices

BLAKE LAWRENCE | Psittacines

CASS SAMMS | Towards Extinction: Into the Afterlife

CLAUDIE FROCK | Gather

3pm, Saturday 20 July 2024

Exhibitions to be officially opened by Catherine Woolley & Karen Hall, UNSW, Curators of Pliable Planes, and address by Mayor of the Clarence Valley, Peter Johnstone.

~ Friends of the Grafton Gallery Pay Bar ~

~ Complimentary Refreshments ~

PLIABLE PLANES | Expanded Textiles & Fibre Practices

Pliable Planes presents contemporary Australian textiles and fibre art in expansive and plural forms, altering perceptions of materials, form, and function. Taking its title from Bauhaus artist Annie Albers, the exhibition challenges artists to rethink the use of textiles through an architectural lens as material that is fundamentally structural and endlessly mutable. Exhibiting artists reflect on the use of textiles to chart social and cultural change, responding to historical modes of production and representation, and underlying histories of domesticity and women’s labour. Works seamlessly incorporate traditional textiles including weaving, embroidery, knitting and sewing while exploring broader conceptual and aesthetic possibilities.

A UNSW Galleries touring exhibition curated by Karen Hall & Catherine Woolley.

Presented with the support of Creative Australia. The exhibition began a national tour in 2023 with the support of the Australian Government’s Visions of Australia program.

BLAKE LAWRENCE | Psittacines

Psittacines is an interdisciplinary exhibition comprising photography, large-scale cyanotype textiles, installation and performance by Warrang/Sydney-based artist Blake Lawrence. The exhibition explores both material and imagined relationships between drag performers and birds and offers a platform for contemplating and mourning mass extinction in the Anthropocene. Found leaves, twigs and feathers fold into scanned and layered compositions beside synthetic and human hair wigs and rhinestones. Bodies melt in and out of frames in acts of expanded self-portraiture. A tea brewed from organic matter toned crude cyanotype shrouds, and the gestures of lip-sync are offered as an act of mourning.

The works in Psittacines were made in collaboration with three urban parrot species of Sydney – including the Little Corella (Cacatua sanguinea), Rainbow Lorikeet (Trichoglossus moluccanus), and Musk Lorikeet (Glossopsitta concinna). Blake Lawrence is an interdisciplinary artist born and raised on Yaegl land and waters in the Clarence Valley. Psittacines was made on the city streets of unceded Gadigal land.

A Grafton Regional Gallery Exhibition.

CASS SAMMS | Towards Extinction: Into the Afterlife

In Towards Extinction: Into the Afterlife, Cass Samms brings our attention to the issues of threatened species, extinction, and the impacts of humankind on the species of this continent. The Australian continent has grappled with accelerated extinction since colonisation, with many species becoming threatened and extinct, with loss of habitat and human impact.

In this exhibition, Samms references historical and ancient customs dealing with concepts of grief and loss. A particular focus is Ancient Egyptian culture, and its techniques of preservation and commemoration. In the face of extinction and loss of species, she ponders ideas of the afterlife, what can be done to commemorate extinct species, and preserve their memory.

A Grafton Regional Gallery Exhibition.

CLAUDIE FROCK | Gather

Gather is the new work of Northern Rivers based, site-responsive, socially-engaged artist and botanical ink-maker Claudie Frock. This exhibition explores relationship to place through sustainable foraging and collaboration with the land, natural ecosystems, plants and fungi, and the human and non-human communities existing in the places the artist engages with. Frock’s expanded drawing practice focuses on process, materiality, gathering and drawing as a collaborative, gestural, immediate and durational act; honouring the pigment and places where she gathers and makes her botanical ink.

Claudie has responded to places across the Northern Rivers region, including areas on the lands of the Widjabul Wia-bul people and Bundjalung and Gumbaynggirr Nations. She has developed a series of drawings that delight in the materiality of her medium and reveal colours unique to the place, season and time in which they were made.

A Grafton Regional Gallery Exhibition.

Grafton Regional Gallery is wheelchair & mobility aid accessible

Proudly hosted on Bundjalung Country.

Accessible parking available in Gallery carpark, access via side driveway from 158 Fitzroy St.

Image credit: Kate Scardfield. 'You Don't Need Me To Tell You', 2022 (production still). Photo: Robin Hearfield.