Good evening everyone. It’s a great pleasure to have been invited to open
this lovely exhibition, Island, the work of two truly wonderful women, Liz
Jeneid and Diana Wood Conroy, both academic alumni of the University of
Wollongong, Liz being a Honorary Research Fellow, having taught in the
Visual Arts program for 20 years, while Diana is Emeritus Professor of Visual
Arts and someone I feel privileged to work with. In fact I can’t do without her! I
am honoured to follow in both their footsteps.
Before I go onto talk briefly about the artists and the art, I do want to
acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands we stand on tonight, the
Wodi Wodi people of the Dharawal nation, and to extend my respects to their
Elders past and present, and to any Aboriginal people who may be here
tonight. I’m grateful to have the privilege of living and working in this beautiful
part of the country - known to European settlers as the garden of NSW – that
was before deforestation and coal mines – when it must have been a
paradise, but even now it’s a very special place.
As I’ve already suggested, Liz and Diana are not only both committed artists,
but also educators, and lovers of knowledge, which feels unbelievably radical
in these days of managerialist rhetoric and business knows best. Look at
these exquisitely detailed works. Such close attention not only to the natural
world, but also to the process of making, to domestic objects, and the traces
of lives long gone, makes these works simultaneously poignant and
compelling. There is a kind of abnegation of the ego in favour of a rigorous
immersion in the processes of observing and making, or as John Cage, so
famously influenced by the teachings of Zen Buddhism insisted, ‘art is not an
attempt to bring order out of chaos, but simply a way of waking up the very life
that we’re living’. Endlessly curious, they travel, explore, investigate,
undertake, learn and imagine. They are awake to the wonder of the world.
For both women, art and life are inextricably linked – like weaving itself – the
warp and the weft - the imbrication of art in life, of relationships formed and
nurtured over extended periods of time. As Professor Amanda Lawson has
written (please note I am surrounded by amazing women - it’s a terrible
responsibility): they have worked in dialogue with each other for more than 30
years. They have shared journeys to extraordinary geographical and
archaeological sites, sourced inspiration in the medium of textiles, and
combined the documentary with the lyrical in their explorations” (2010).
Despite the exquisite and painstaking materiality of their respective practices,
their work might be described in terms of an open-ended, ongoing and multifaceted research project that is as much about learning to live in the world
with all of its contradictions and paradoxes, as it is about developing a form of
art practice that is both materially engaged and aesthetically pleasing. They
work with ostensibly simple materials and traditional processes, and their
work has a freshness that is to do with perception, attentiveness, of working
without hubris.
In this exhibition, Diana has woven “lost patterns from Cyprus using ash from
an excavation and pomegranate dye”, but beneath this apparent simplicity lies
years of experience as an archaeologist and artist working between the
classical worlds of western civilization – in the last 20 years primarily through
her participation in in the archaeological dig at the Paphos theatre
excavations in Cyprus - and that of Australia’s 1st nation peoples, but with a
particular interest, history and experience with the people of Tiwi Island.
Islands as you can see, are a recurrent trope in her life and work.
Having training in the States as a weaver, Liz returned to Australia in 1977,
firstly establishing a production-weaving studio in Sydney where she trained
many apprentices, and then establishing the Barr St Weaving studio in the
early 80s. Liz’s multi-faceted art practice also encompasses print-making,
drawing and painting, and installation and sculpture. In Island, and I quote, Liz
‘expresses on paper and in artist books the poetry of place, plants and
landscapes explored through her artist residencies in Costa Rica, Greece,
Sicily and France.’ Of her artist’s books, she says that she thinks of them as a
kind of haiku – something that allows for the essence of an idea to be
expressed.
At the moment, and because I have been faced with the need to respond to
our Attorney General’s unanticipated hijacking of the Australia Council for the
Arts, the Australian Government’s arts funding and advisory body, I have
been reflecting on both the intrinsic and extrinsic values of the arts, and the
importance of arguing for the arts on their own terms. To that end, I’ve been
reading John Tusa’s 2014 publication, ‘Pain in the Arts’ and while of course
his book is very British in its focus, he has a number of important messages
for those of us interested and engaged in the arts in our various ways. One
that seems particularly pertinent as I look at these two splendid women and all
that they’ve achieved as artists and educators, is the incredibly advocacy they
have undertaken on behalf of the arts inside the academy, and for the value of
arts and education in the wider world. I am so grateful for everything that they
do. They continue to be generous mentors and role models for emerging
generations of artists, academics, and students. But I am particularly thrilled
that Liz and Diana continue to make the beautiful, poignant and life-affirming
work that they do; that that they bring not only their intellectual and emotional
intelligence to the task of living and making art, but also their sense of wonder
and deep appreciation for the world we share.
Welcome to Island. It’s a pleasure to declare this exhibition open.