80 BD

Myra Gilbert
THE EMBROIDERESS

Gampi tissue paper and ink

The artist has been exploring the most formative memories of her childhood, and expressing her responses to them in a series of three dimensional mixed media pieces. This piece of work is a 1950’s dress, and it refers to her enduring memory of watching her mother gardening. The border of the dress is made out of the text of a poem about her mother and the words form plants in the flowerbed. At the time, the herbaceous border represented a boundary to her five children, and they were warned not to disturb her when she was looking after it. Originally the accompanying poem was entitled Border Patrol, but on completion of the dress, it seemed more appropriate to reflect the fact that her mother’s beautiful garden was a medium for artistic self-expression for her mother. Hence its title “The Embroideress’.

The dress also belongs in a more extensive series of ‘memory clothing’ artworks carefully constructed using fragile silk-like tissue paper made from a natural gampi fibre. It is individually cut, and sewn by hand using silk thread. The hand written lines of her poem replicate the use of fabric prints of the time. The colours used in the text original accompanying poem exactly portray the internal imagery provided by the artist’s graphic synaesthesia.

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Myra Gilbert

Myra GilbertTHE EMBROIDERESS

Myra Gilbert
THE EMBROIDERESS