nothing matters

Isobel Johnston and I exhibited together in 2006 at the Esa Jaske Gallery, Chippendale, our show was entitled, nothing matters.

Through a process of negation involving cutting out or blacking out, we individually remodelled quotidian craft activities associated with the home rather than the studio. The resulting works are fictional (no longer fabric or tapestry, they provide a narrative space to examine our relationship to the aesthetics of the everyday world they represent.

Jude Crawford, absence 1 (left) and absence 2 (right), 2006, each 6 x cut stencil paper 76cm x 100cm

col notmat absence 1 col notmat absence 2

In absence 1 and absence 2, lace patterns provide a means to explore negative space, reductive art making and the notion that 'emptiness has weight; absence gestures at meaning.' *

Isobel Johnston, House with a picket fence, 2006, Fabric paint on found wool tapestry, 26 x 38 cm (courtesy of the artist)

col not mat Isobel

In Isobel Johnston's repurposed tapestries untouched circles become abstract focal points on obscured backgrounds.

*Shields, Carol, Dressing up for the Carnival, 'Invention', Fourth Estate Ltd., London, 2000