Dear ALL
Dates to diarise:
- 10 October - End January 2024 Exhibition at the Stellenbosch Craft and Art Gallery. More on this later
Friday 1 December at 9.30 - Zoom discussion on Collaborative Work. More on this later
Friday 19 April Work to be delivered for the Tina Skukan Gallery exhibition. National Members' Exhibition 2024. More on this later
1 May to May 31 Exhibition in Pretoria at the Tina Skukan Gallery.
Present: RosalieDace, Jeanette Gilks, Odette Tolksdorf, Jenny Hearn, Celia de Villiers, Tessa Horan, Elaine Barnard, Kim Tedder, Susan Wessels, Sheila Walwyn, Annette McMaster, Sue Akerman, Prue Nicholson, Cathy Knox, Helga Beaumont
Apologies: Jen Retief, Sarojani Ganesen, Paul Schutte, Mari Claasè, Karin Arbeter, Mandy Shindler, Kathy Harmer Fox, Sally Scott
Congratulations to Lynn van Wyk who is our newest member of Fibreworks. Welcome to the Team!
As is usual, the minutes of all our meetings are incorporated into the body of the newsletter:
- The Fibreworks Constitution and Guidelines
It was agreed by all members present to send the Constitution and Guidelines to new members once they have joined the group. Previously, new members received the Fibreworks Document of Intent, but since the content of this document has been incorporated into the Constitution, it's no longer necessary to send this as a separate attachment.
The old Constitution served us very well initially, but in the light of world-wide changes and new trends in communications, it became essential to upgrade.
The will be added to the Fibreworks website and available for all to see. The guideline will not be available on the website
- Exhibitions
Hilton Arts Festival KZN
Here below is a report back from Helga and Cathy who attended the show.
The Festival was held at Hilton College from 11 - 13 September and was very well attended. However, sales were generally poor across the board.
Cathy Knox invited Fibreworks members to exhibit with her at the show. The cost was R3500 for 4 sq meters of space, and 10 KwaZulu members each paid R350 to participate. Due to the small square meterage, the decision was taken to only include KZN members.
Due to truck crashes, the Durban-Pietermaritzburg highway was closed for hours, so Sarojani and I only arrived at 4 pm after a 6 1/2 hour journey that usually takes one hour! Sue Akerman and Cathy with the help of her friend and Graham McIntosh set up as much of the exhibition as they could. Barbara Murray also helped hang and man the stalls.
Sue Clarens, the promotor of Hilton Arts Festival, asked Cathy if we had more works to hang. Other artists were cancelling, and she wanted a good showing in the art marquees. So in the end we had something like 10 times the extra space at no extra cost! A big thank you to Cathy for all her negotiating skills.
Roy Starke had his own exhibition around the corner from the rest of the show. At the end of the exhibition, Fibreworks donated one of Roy's quilts, "Abundance to Solitude", to Graham McIntosh for all the wonderful times we spent at Sewula Lodge with Santie.
The main feature of our exhibition was a 2 x 2 m book made by our newest member Jenny Retief. It was a knockout and was much admired, touched and pages turned. Sue Akerman sold two works Well done, Jenny and Sue!
- Stellenbosch Craft and Art Gallery - Spring Exhibition. Cape
Here is the opening address from Elizabeth Gunter
FIBREWORKS
SPRING
iThemba Gallery, Stellenbosch
10 October 2023
I meet for the first time a group of artists who draws on the intersections between art, design, and craft to create art. The display is diverse in appearance and joyful in its celebrations of spring. This is a group show that represents several artists, and instead of focusing on meaning in individual pieces, I would rather like to consider a unifying element of the show.
What strikes me as a prominent aspect shared by all the artworks, is the labour of making and its uncanny power to shape something from nothing, to bring into the world something that has never existed before. As is very evident here, fibre art reaches quite far beyond weaving alone, but allow me to dwell for a moment on the process of weaving as a compelling metaphor for the labour of making, or creating, which, of course, does have bearing on the wide variety of processes and media that the artists of this exhibition employ with exquisite beauty and care.
Each artist's fibre-language, -form, and -media flowed from nothingness, to speak here of their unique form of labour as bond, a binding cord, (rather than snare) between self and life-world. Fibre-art symbolizes the threads, the warp and weft (or woof) that both shape and fuse self-as-present in this world. We are as irrevocably woven into this world, as it weaves us.
The fibre-artworks on display here also create a bond between each artist and us, the viewing audience, revealing the range of imagination and its re-shaping as new form. Imagination is nothingness, but it yields something - in this exhibition, art objects quite potent with meaning, whether that of protection, functionality, decoration, commodity, critique, or care.
Strangely, such nothingness in weaving is termed 'shed', also inferring emission, seepage, or flow - yet, that which could potentially or effectively materialise as cloth. Then, together with warp and weft (or woof) (die skering en inslag in Afrikaans) the shed shapes the weave, it is the creative act, and its yields. The shed is that elusive nothing-between, simultaneously the imagined and its form, that thing-thought the materialisation of which we can only anticipate with both anxiety and joy.
Instrumental to the shed is a weird device of separation, namely the shuttle (die pyl haan). This tool cleaves warp from weft, leaving a rift in its wake. That rift is the shed's place of origin and yield, a space - nothingness - in which it lays itself down as woof, both birth and litter. Ironically, hidden in the weave's history is destruction and creation, two forces destined to intersect in becoming.
The silent, slow, and mindful labour that went into the artworks on show here today draws us in, allowing us to sense and imagine those intimacies of having all our selves in hand. We see here how the fine craft of weaving, stitching, plaiting, pulling, threading affirms our selves-as-present. Each work on display reflects its maker's need to be seen, touched, heard, felt, and ultimately, restored, and mended.
Does the facility of needle and thread to make, produce, and heal in so many ways not astonish?
Elizabeth Gunter
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- Members' Exhibition 2024
Jenny Hearn and Tilly de Harde have organized for Fibreworks to exhibit at the Tina Skukan Gallery in Pretoria in May 2024. Thanks for investigating venues Jenny and Tilly, and finally securing this one.
The closing date for works to be delivered is 19 April 2024. More details will follow in due course.
The suggestion is that the works travel from Stellenbosch to Johannesburg to be exhibited at the National exhibition in Pretoria. However, this idea is tentative at the moment. Further details to follow as there is much to be arranged and finalized.
- Tatham Art Gallery exhibition.
- Collaborative Panel discussion
Think about this. What does collaboration mean to you? How do you define it? There are lots of ways to understand and interpret this concept. Have you collaborated before with other artists? When, Where, Why.
What are some of the benefits of collaboration and the difficulties? Even if you have not collaborated with anyone before, you can still have an opinion and we are all eager to hear your voice!
- Website: https://www.fiberworksart.com/
If there is a query, we put the buyer in touch with you the artist and you negotiate the postage and sale. There is then a commission of 10% that goes to Fibreworks.
- Finances:
Fibreworks finances are in a healthy state. At Hilton two works sold and Fibreworks took a 10% commission on these two sales to cover any costs incurred. Fibreworks paid R3500 to Hilton for the exhibition space, but the 10 artists who participated, repaid this money back to Fibreworks.
We purchased a credit card machine, but despite the banks affirmation that there are no hidden costs and only a 2.5% cost on each transaction, there does seem to be extra costs for the use of it. We paid for the card machine as a once off, but if we want to use it to pay subs, the cost of R150 will have to go up by about R20 for example as on R300 the credit card cost was R28.76.
Keep well
Jeanette and the Team
