I'm starting to think about my next weaving project, and I'm looking back to double-woven textiles that I made around 2002. My plan is to do a series of double-woven hair textiles. This first work is called The Stepford Wives (Woven version). I'd made a wire and hair sculpture of the same name a few years earlier, and wanted to replicate it on the loom. Double weaving involves making a textile with two layers. You get a different textile depending on how you join the two layers. If, for example, you joined only one edge, then you could have a piece of cloth that was twice as wide as the loom. For this work, the two layers intersect where the two colours meet. Where there is brown hair, on the reverse side is blonde hair, and vice versa.
This work is much smaller, maybe 15cm across? Probably equivalent to the width of three squares in the above work. I think it's called Us and Them. Unfortunately not great images. The first image is the front, and the second is the reverse. These works were the first where I used different coloured hair to represent individuals or groups, as opposed to the anonymous mass, with all the hair mixed together. 
Because spinning the hair into yarn takes so long, I also experimented without different yarns. The following two works are made from wool and linen. The first two images are front and back of the same work. Because the wool is thicker than the linen, the linen ended up floating across the surface in a loose weave.
This work used the same warp and settings as above, but I think I made the shape by picking up warp threads as appropriate, rather than have set threads raised. Hmmm... Does that make any sense? If you weave, it's probably overly simplistic, and if you don't it's probably completely meaningless! Neither of these works, or the one to follow, have titles. I sold them through PCL Exhibitionists, but I don't think I exhibited them in a show.
I can't remember which side of this is the front. I think the black lines on the white background. It's the same size as the above two works, so probably about 50cm square. Wool with a linen warp, I think.
This is a composite of all the paintings that I've shown here and here. They'll never be exhibited in this way, but I thought it would be good to see what they could look like. All the paintings are found images or found text. The sources range from fine art to graffiti, advertising to comics, book covers, propaganda posters, stamps and quirky things I've seen around or read. They're not meant to stand alone as individual paintings, but as a group, like a row of posters pasted on a building site fence, or a rack of magazines in a newsagency. They reference the endless parade of images that we encounter in our media-saturated lives.
My friend Drew has chosen the new ones he wants. See his blog...
Saturday, June 20, sees the launch of the inaugural Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award, with the announcement of the winner, followed by a Contemporary Textile Forum. Liz Williamson, Head of School of Design Studies and Textile Co-ordinator at the College of Fine Arts, UNSW, is the judge for the award, as well as the major speaker at the forum. One of my panels from the Six Degrees series is included in the show (Six Degrees - Vida Gaigalas to Bob Hunt). Unfortunately I won't be able to make the show, but if anyone is in the area, pop in and have a look. The exhibition runs until July 19.
Another dig around the archives, this time The Dog Show at PCL Exhibitionists, 7-18 November 2000The other artists were:Vanessa Forbes, Karen Vernon, Elizabeth Haddad, Sarah Bishop, Jerry Rogers, Val Landa, Lesley Turnbull, Verna O'Neill, Felicity Unwin, Rosalind Friday, Elizabeth Wadsworth, Peta Morris, Lyndal Campbell, Alexandra Gray, Maritsa Micos, Anne Richmond, Sophie Gralton, Audrey Rhoda, Natalie Sherring, Izette Felthun, Marguerite Derricourt, and Gabriella Hegyes.
This was when I was making soft sculptures (see the big teddy bear here). This work is Did She Trip, Or Was She Pushed? They're made from hessian and stuffed with hair (human).
These paintings are collectively titled (Let Slip) The Dogs of War, Also shown here.
I'm not sure if I have a photo of this work by itself. It's called Dogpile and was a stack of photocopies of a dog à la Felix Gonzalez-Torres (the stack, not the dog...). There's another stack work here.
No, I found one! Here it is...
This work is much smaller, maybe 15cm across? Probably equivalent to the width of three squares in the above work. I think it's called Us and Them. Unfortunately not great images. The first image is the front, and the second is the reverse. These works were the first where I used different coloured hair to represent individuals or groups, as opposed to the anonymous mass, with all the hair mixed together. 
Because spinning the hair into yarn takes so long, I also experimented without different yarns. The following two works are made from wool and linen. The first two images are front and back of the same work. Because the wool is thicker than the linen, the linen ended up floating across the surface in a loose weave.
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