2008-09

sand, time, breath, gesture, calico, funnel, hose, nozzel and breath

(Video) 6 minute loop

Walking the beach on Bruny Island I came across an exquisite piece of seaweed whose spread form looked just like an anatomical map of the lungs. A central trunk branched in two and kept parting and dividing into two symmetrical arrangements of long, delicate twists. It was lying flat on the wet sand and as I approached the shallow water washed up and receded, repeatedly animating the rippling weed and then laying it flat again. From my perspective it seemed that the weed was breathing. That observation then widened into a sense of the ocean itself breathing, controlled by tides at the direction of the turning and returning moon, and on out to an entire universe at the command of gravity.  A great inhalation and exhalation. From the micro to the macrocosm, all these cycles, and light years folding into a moment.

I made a drawing tool from a sack of sand, a funnel, a hose and a nozzle.

I wanted to draw breath without a preconceived idea of the shape it might take or the direction it might take me. This is a record of the time that drawing lasted and the form it took.

I sat in the dusk feeling that great pull to connect. While learning to relinquish control and to let the world bear me, the poets helped. They all said to let the wind in.In truth we are already intertwined. A vast and intricate circuitry of breath and fibre.You can rest in that.

I frequently recall moments when the mind extends way out beyond the skull and time, place and body blur into a single state of being. These embroideries explore 'interconnectedness' themes via human relationship with the rest of the natural world. They relate to previous works I have made in response to place; personal epiphanies amid sand dunes, appreciation for the wind in the grasses, resonance with the land and conversations with the sky.Time spent with Tasmanian woodblock printer Michael Schlitz has influenced the imagery and mark making in this work. I have also drawn sustenance from feelings expressed by earthly cosmologist DavidAbram, poet Mary Oliver, philosopher/therapist Eugene Gendlin and Arnhem Landstoryman Bill Neidje.

2012-2015 

For some time I made work in honour of the Merri Creek billabong and it’s delicate presence.

When properly attended to it is a place at least as wonderful as any far-flung locale I've visited.

These works grew from a felt sense of our bodies and selves being intimately connected with the rest of the natural world, all the time.

Entanglement / Connection (detail)

Installation, 2008

projected light, steel pins, thread, wire, space

Watching the wind move the dunes. After the storm, in the late afternoon, the head lifts and drops back, taking in the horizon in front and behind in one movement. The chest feels ripped apart by the sky’s eloquence. The mind extends way out beyond the skull. Analysis dissolves. There is a mutual exchange between the body and the brilliant world. All around and in and through.

The quantum physicist tells us we live in an entangled universe. Not observing, but being.

Newhaven

At the edge of the Tanami Desert I camped with a group of seven artists on Birds Australia's Newhaven Reserve. Far from being barren, there is an awe-inspiring presence in this subtle country. The land elicits a receptive, reverential response, a blend of watching and feeling. It rewards close observation.

Colour and rhythm arefundamental considerations in my work and Newhaven has both in extraordinaryabundance. As we flew over Alice I looked down in awe on the spotted land.Spinifex, Salt Bush and Mulga on red-ochre soils. A great pattern in macrocosm.I remembered flying home from overseas years back and looking down on thepattern of the central desert while the Australian Girls choir sang ‘I am, youare, we are Australian’ on the in flight radio. Despite myself I had wept. Thedesert has that effect. We arrived to a pinkblush in the sky and the moon rising full to the side of the range. I came witha backpack of fabric and edited throughout the week, pairing down to anaccurate palette. I dyed cloth over the fire with the leaves of Eucalypts.  In the mornings Ibraved the flies and went out looking. I found Budgerigar feathers in the litter of lost leaves by the camp. A dry Rhinoceros Beetle under a Bloodwood. I found superb contrast and treasure everywhere. White ghost gums against the rust range. Black crow against blue sky. Silhouetted Corkwood Hakeas in flower.Petrified insects in the stopped swell of the still dry salt lake. A coral band in the sunset and our little group around the fire. There were little tracks between the grasses all over the red dunes left by small birds, hopping mice, bilbys, lizards, and snakes. A palimpsest of paths. And a trail of fine, shining threads tacking across the sand recording a procession of caterpillars between Spinifex and Mulga.  This land arrested us. At the top of the gorge, native figs grew. The photographer lay down and closed his eyes. We all fell silent but the birds.I was quiet too in the old desert oaks, where I lay in the sand drawing cones - in wonder over the company I was keeping - trees, wind, artists and land. Sketching under the darkening sky listening to that quietly magnificent wind in the Casuarinas. That simultaneous hush and reverberation, the high and low thrum of desert’s breath through the jointed needles. I felt like the earth was exhaling and I was truly breathing in the world.

Spring Summer 11/12

silk organza, inherited fabrics, thread
cloth collage (appliqué)
each piece 92 x 63cm 

I spent most of my time recovering close to home during the Spring and Summer of 2011/12. 
Still Life.
The sunlight streaming onto my bed in the mornings was a joy. That light, and delight in the colours of my op shopped bedspread, provided lovely company and kept me for the most part deliciously in the present. It also influenced this work.

Produced for 'Material Culture: Light and Volume' 
Counihan Gallery, Brunswick. March 2012
Now in Private Collections.

Walk Invitation
Courtesy of NETS Victoria.
National Tour 2006-2009. 

At the heart of this exhibition is a 250 kilometre journey along the Great South West Walk, an increasingly endangered natural environment cradled in the far south-west corner of Victoria. For three weeks, this group of artists travelled together through forest and river, estuary and bay to create work in response to their experience of the Walk. The artists followed a path that took them far from the familiarity and isolation of the studio into a landscape conceived as a creative, social, cultural, ethical and aesthetic relation to place. 
Curator: Martina Copley. 
NETS National Tour. 2007-2009

A contemporary Trousseau

Craft Victoria 2004

Into this delicate, beautiful, exquisitely crafted work Ilka White has woven a meditation; a sensing, a consideration, of a painful and central life dilemma which could be articulated this way: What makes a full and fruitful life? In this work she has opened out images and questions that spring, in part, from the experience of being single in her child-bearing years. As you look at the work, you will see layers of fabric and thread, layers of words, embroideries, textures, images and patterns. You will see fabric "wrong sides" and "right sides", samplers and pattern pieces. The work invites a going in, a calming down, and a careful looking. In the work, the artist considers her inheritance of ideas, patterns and archetypes and cuts her own patterns, forming a unique articulation of issues around fruitfulness, creativity and singleness. She opens her 2004 glory box and lets the trousseau hang in the air. 

Beth Shelton

Commissioned for the exhibition ‘Medalling: Eight designers on a quest’ (An exhibition medalling with the idea of medals)Part of the Cultural Festival Program, Melbourne 2006Commonwealth Games. 

Photographer: Marc Buckner