Tag: textiles

  • Stars – a Conversation and Cloth event

    This coming week, on Wednesday 26th June, there will be a Conversation and Cloth event in Hokitika. At 5:30 in the library I will be talking about the stars, an appropriate topic for Matariki. I will have some of the stars of the collection, such as the one pictured below, with me and will present…

  • Venice and the Biennale – part two

    The Venice Biennale’s traditional site is the Giardini, public gardens created by Napoleon at the start of the 19th Century. The first years of the exhibition saw more than 200,000 people attend the venues and over the decades since buildings have been erected to house country pavilions, showcasing artists and ideas from around the globe,…

  • Hélène Kuhn Ferruzzi

    Venice has long been known for its music, art and artists. In the narrow route along a canal that leads past Peggy Guggenheim’s gallery of European and American art is a small shop with windows that tell of the artistic eye of Hélène Kuhn Ferruzzi. Enchanting and wondrous, this shop is a destination for the…

  • Venice and the Biennale (Part One)

    Taking place in the beautiful city of Venice with its picturesque canals, boats and bridges as well as its plethora of fine buildings, the Biennale 2024 is thought-provoking and surprising. Spread across the city, the main venues of the exhibition are the Arsenale and Giardini, the former a naval shipyard and the latter, as the…

  • Home again

    We are home again after our overseas trip and what a trip it was! Over the next few weeks I shall share some of the exciting things we saw in Venice at the Art Biennale, in London, Shetland, and Athens. You can see a few of the things we have seen in the slideshow at…

  • Susanna Bauer’s crocheted leaves

    Susanna Bauer, the UK based artist who stitches and crochets leaves, has published a new monograph. “IN LEAF”, published by 5 Continents Editions, celebrates the fragility of nature and its interconnections through the threads with which the artist works. You can see some of the sculptures here. To learn more about the artist follow this…

  • Lobola – negotiating an African wedding

    Lobola – negotiating an African wedding

    Thank you to our South African reader who sent this in to share. In Africa, weddings are often marked by a “bride price” – a payment that signals the negotiations for the joining together of two families. Lobola is a cultural practice that differs across the continent, and in South Africa it is often part…

  • Conversation and Cloth – Hokitika

    The West Coast of Aotearoa New Zealand is full of history and tales. In the middle of the Southern Winter, as the world turns and seasons change, a star cluster rises in the sky. This is known in New Zealand as Matariki, a shortened version of “Ngā Mata o te Ariki Tāwhirimātea” (the eyes of the…

  • A tapa sampler

    The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Aotearoa’s national museum, has a unique taonga: a book of tapa samples. This book, rather grandly entitled “A Catalogue of the different specimens of cloth collected in the three voyages of Captain Cook, to the Southern hemisphere : with a particular account of the manner of the…

  • Can indigenous knowledge help mathematics?

    A university in Australia, the Australian National University, has developed a course in mathematics that includes teaching about Indigenous Knowledge. For anyone interested in mathematics, particularly where the arts are concerned – see the read more section below – a course that includes this kind of knowledge is invaluable. There are many ways of explaining…