THREADED CONNECTIONS

Threaded Connections is a large collaborative artwork commissioned by Lismore Regional Gallery as an explorative project that promotes a sense of community identity in the area. The work was designed by contemporary textile artist, Lucille Martin, and made over a two year period by over 40 members of the Lismore and District Embroiderer’s Group. In 2008 the exhibition of Threaded Connections, was accompanied by 40 individual works from the Lismore & District Embroiderers Group and a solo exhibition by Lucille Martin.

Award winning local documentary film-maker, Sharon Shostak, produced a film following the creative journey made by Lucille Martin and members of the Lismore & District Embroiderers Guild in the making of this artwork. The film will be broadcast on ABC2 on July 5 at 21.25 and ABC1 on July 12 at 15.54, 2009.

The intention behind Threaded Connections was to consider the history of the area as something that is continual, not just distant or unrelated memory of an era past but rather as something that feeds directly into the present. The broad form of a river, representing the many prominent local rivers in the Northern Rivers, runs across the centre of the work. It is made from hand spun silk. You’ll notice details such as letters, reflections on the area from women who have worked on this piece and women pioneers from the region. The work also incorporates early maps of the area, reproduced using contemporary technologies and elements such as oval forms showing local flora and fauna dyed using natural dyes.

Lucille Martin worked very closely with the Lismore Embroiderer’s Guild in the making of this piece. She says “another one of the intentions behind it was to encourage the artists of the guild work outside the boundaries of their traditional craft practises and to re- explore, re-new and re-discover the expressive power and possibilities of their medium.”

This work sensitively interweaves the old and the new in a way that communicates the ongoing nature of history combined with the need to look to the future in a continual reassessment of who we are. The work is made from Natural fibres, Gold thread and Digital transfers and was Commissioned by Lismore Regional Gallery with funding assistance from Arts NSW.