“There’s something very special about looking into where you come from and what surrounds you,” says Sydney artist Bruce Slorach. “It is incredibly easy to take for granted, but when you look at it and put a microscope on it, Australia’s flora and fauna would have to be the most beautiful nature in the world.”
With a 40-year career, Slorach has continuously drawn attention to the wonder of Australian nature. Under the banner of Utopia Goods Textiles, whereby Slorach collaborates with his partner Sophie Tatlow, the pair have created textiles which reference various wildlife elements in line with contemporary design.
The creation of the textiles is a purposefully slow process, more in line with nature than fast-paced society. For instance, one of their recent works, Country Bunch, created through fine jacquard tapestry, has taken over 10 months from an initial sketch to a finished piece. And the weaving was completed at one of the oldest weaving mills in the United States.
Now, Slorach’s textiles, drawings and paintings, are currently showing at Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf for Native Deities—and you can view these works in pictures.
Bruce Slorach, Lyrebird, 2023, Hand knotted wool and silk wall hanging, 120cm x 175cm (3). Photo, Katie Kaars. IImage courtesy Utopia Goods Textiles.
Bruce Slorach, Lyrebird, 2023, Hand knotted wool and silk wall hanging, 120cm x 175cm (1). Photo, Katie Kaars. IImage courtesy Utopia Goods Textiles.
Bruce Slorach, Kookaburra with Snake, 2023, Gouache on paper, 45cm x 62cm. Image courtesy Utopia Goods.
Bruce Slorach, Kookaburra with Snake, 2023, Hand knotted wool and silk wall hanging, 120cm x 175cm (2). Photo, Katie Kaars. Image courtesy Utopia Goods Textiles.
Bruce Slorach, Kookaburra with Snake, 2023, Hand knotted wool and silk wall hanging, 120cm x 175cm (Detail 2). Photo, Katie Kaars. Image courtesy Utopia Goods Textiles.
Native Deities
Bruce Slorach
Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf
3 May – 28 May 2023
With so much to choose from, we’ve rounded up the major summer exhibitions in each capital city, open all summer long. Spanning Yayoi Kusama, Magritte, the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, and many more.
Ahead of the National Gallery of Victoria’s major retrospective on singular Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, we invited four artists to respond to the influence of Kusama on their own practice—and meditate on what her work means to them.
For Patrick Pound, whose new installation The Museum of Falling is on show now at the City Gallery, the arrangement of objects and images has long blurred the line between fact and fiction, jolting our perception in surprising and unusual ways.
un Magazine was conceived to champion courageous art criticism in an art world too often shaped by power and influence, a mission that still endures two decades on.
Helen Mueller has been printmaking for 25 years, but moving to Hobart four years ago shifted her focus to the local natural environment. Now her delicate prints, made with materials foraged from the forest floor, are showing at Handmark Gallery.
In his latest exhibition at Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Jack Ball challenges the extractive history of the archive while searching for shapes that can articulate the complexity of trans life.
