Threads of Life

Unpublished works by Yvonne Line

29 July to 23 August

OFFICIAL OPENING: Thursday 31 July, 5.30–7.30pm

A life of art and textiles

Twenty textile art panels, with an audio performance overlay by actor Kerryn Beatty, act as a comment on the daily grind of most female home carers. Kerryn has taken Yvonne's diary and created a poem to match her creation of daily work over 2018 to 2019. This gives some understanding of an artist's compulsion to create.

Over approximately one year (2018–19) Yvonne created a small textile piece based on her inspiration on each day, from her found materials collection. These had been given, or inherited, over a lifetime of textile art work. A lot of them from the family of aunts, dance costumes and vintage off-cuts and a collection of Batik materials. A daily diary was written of passing thoughts during this time.

Until her permanent disability two years ago, with Alzheimer's Disease, Yvonne was a visual artist based near Campbelltown, NSW she has lived in Albury for the last two years now. Her practice spans six decades of change and experimentation.

Her multidisciplinary training and experience includes teaching, creating wearable art and dressmaking. Her technical skills are immaculate. She has spent her formative years doing life drawing, painting and sculpting but she has a particular attraction to tactile materials and working with materials of all genres. Yvonne has over 2014 to 2020 worked with felting, spinning, dyeing, direct painting and printmaking on her textile art works.

Trained at the College of Fine Art in Paddington her life's work is an eclectic mix of styles due to her continual experimentation in one-off productions since her initial training.

“The primary basis of my work is the reflection and result of human occupation on the environment and reflects my habitation of same, as well as how others treat the surrounds of this planet. I continue the use of collected and donated fabrics both from Australia and from world travels and recycle those found objects.” Yvonne Line 2021.

“For me the use of textiles is essentially a voice of housebound makers and a demonstration of the solidarity and communication by woman-to-woman and the female support community. The last few years (2022 - Ed) I have been extending and developing ideas into several extension works and into a textile series. This decision has satisfied the process of a subject but leaves little option for local exhibitions as they are so different from traditional works.”

(This comment was based on some of her unpublished works - Ed.)

See more of Yvonne's work on her website: https://yvonnelinetextileart.com.au/