Monday, October 01, 2007

knitting as protest



Last night I headed into town with Rayna Fahey, left, founder of Radical Cross Stitch, and a fellow Kiwi Zoe Thompson-Moore.
Rayna now lives in Melbourne (with an adorable baby and a now competent finger knitting fellow) and she and Zoe organised a workshop about craft as protest and craft as a cohesive social structure for women.
The workshop was in the morning, but there was mention of another Melbourne-based artist that was doing huge cross stitch graffiti on hurricane fences as a means of protest and there was a brief mention of there being plenty of blank canvasses in the town.
Well Sally and I were interested and at the end of the session asked if they were going to do some.
The end results was at 10pm we met up in town, quickly mastered the skill of finger knitting and sat around knitting long, thickish threads that Rayna and Zoe used to stitch a message on the fence around what was the Palais, one of the towns oldest dance halls and a structure that is being demolished, leaving just the facade for heritage reasons. A few of the squatters who live in the area watched and spoke to us.
As soon as I can I'll get a picture of the completed saying, which was I want to Live Here with a big heart at the end.

No comments: