General News
4 July, 2024
Showcase weaves tales
Roughly 300 kilometres away from Maryborough, a local artist’s latest tapestry of work is currently on display at the Wangaratta Art Gallery. Flossie Peitsch’s new exhibition Fearless — aptly named — is bold, spirited, and a deeply personal...
Roughly 300 kilometres away from Maryborough, a local artist’s latest tapestry of work is currently on display at the Wangaratta Art Gallery.
Flossie Peitsch’s new exhibition Fearless — aptly named — is bold, spirited, and a deeply personal undertaking.
The showcase in Wangaratta will allow visitors to browse through a collection of more than fifty tapestry weavings as well as five “strange, quilted, animal-shaped assemblages” created by Ms Peitsch.
Her “textile practice is informed by the history of women’s craft work, particularly the quilting traditions passed down through the matrilineal generations of her family” an excerpt from the exhibition reads.
“Her tapestry weavings tackle subjects such as gender, ageism, spirituality, displacement and her personal experience as an immigrant in a new country.
“Fearless addresses the struggle, transformation and ultimately the calm of lives lived to the full — weaving together the ordinary and extraordinary experiences of our contemporary social lives.”
In expressing her own “deeper philosophies” behind the display, Ms Peitsch’s response was very perceptive.
“An artist creating fine art under the pretence of art therapy is something I dismissed as authentic practice in my PhD research,” she said.
“Now, I must retract those words. After all, fine art is fine art — no matter what its impetus. Another thing that needs saying, is that I want to disappear from sight, hide behind this collection, to somehow become invisible.
“There are countless online articles interrogating the effect and importance of artists’ identifying identity and stressing social issues in society. I have often done just that during my long art practice.
“However, this time I aimed for an ambiguity of self — my fearlessness comes cloaked in a smaller, quieter, more fragile voice.”
