Mandy Gunn on WEAVING AS ARTFORM

摘要

Since then, our house has always had a weaving room and a range of four-shaft upright and horizontal, tapestry, rug and wall-hanging looms and I have moved on from making linen mats to weaving with an amazing range of non-traditional warp and weft materials, gathered from all walks of life.I was incredibly lucky; Warrnambool TAFE in the 1980s introduced an off-campus tapestry diploma under the guidance of two amazing teachers: Marie Cook and Valerie Kirk and this was to be the start of a wonderful nine years of art school training. It included tapestry, a new minor subject in the Bachelor of Fine Arts at Monash University which then led me on to two years of post-graduate study at the Victorian College of the Arts and a Master's Degree shortly after. I was introduced to many different historical and contemporary approaches and concepts and encouraged to find my own way of expressing these.My interest in using non-traditional materials in woven pieces received a sudden boost in 1995 when, as a postgrad student at the VCA, I was part of an amazing camping trip with visits to a number of the Central Desert art centres. We met many well-known artists and sat with them, painting and watching. What really impressed me then and some years later, when I spent three months at Aurukun Community on Cape York on a weaving project, was the innovative way in which Indigenous people made use of what was lying around. When I returned to art school, what should I find but a whole room stacked with leftover cardboard. This was to be the start of my constructed three-dimensional works in which I use recycled papers collaged on to sheets of cardboard which I then cut into strips using a steel ruler and a knife. All the strips are then reconstructed in a repetitive sculptural form over a grid base. It is in a way a form of 3D weaving.