I’m working out the awards and how they correspond with the ribbons ; ’finding time to read’ is the blue ribbon on the chest, ‘watching more live football’ is the vertical stripe on the arm, the orange ribbon on the sleeve is for “getting to know the neighbours’ …

The trip coincided with India’s Republic Day and there was an ever present military presence. I found myself in a very small military ribbon and button shop, and remembered the Assam soldiers…

I was in Delhi giving a talk with my key collaborator Kate Daw at Sarai. Saria is an impressive institution hosting research fellows presenting two talks a week. Emily Floyd, John Meede and Simon Maidment to create an interesting look at contemporary art from Melbourne. A memorable summing up of our practices by Shuddha Sengupta one of the founders of Sarai and a key memeber of Raqs Media Collective.

John Meade has a show on at Sutton this weekend.

We’ll try and provide an awards guide for shirts if we get a chance, otherwise we’re open to suggestions.

Some very fresh artplay seats have just been pieced together, inspired by our very talented patchworker Jeannette Mayne.

I met Jeannette quite soon after I arrived in Australia, so I think it must have been 2001. She has these amazing sewing skills, traditional skills passed down to her through her family. Her parents emigrated from Scotland to Australia when she was only two years old, so I’m guessing that would have been in the 1940’s.

One day Jeannette came to my studio and was showing me photographs of old patchwork quilts, and I must admit I wasn’t particularly interested until I saw this one piece, very different, looked strangely contemporary and much less formulaic. She told me the quilt I liked had an interesting story… she explained that during the depression, ( in the 1930’s ) small rural communities in Australia started to make patchwork quilts which they gave as presents from the community to newly married couples.

Each woman would sew on a small section of the quilt, sometimes just a single piece of fabric that would eventually make up the quilt. Times were very hard so they gathered the pieces of fabric from odd sources, old curtains, a fabric sample book, a lining from a coat…

Each woman would sew on a small section of the quilt, sometimes just a single piece offabric that would eventually make up the quilt. Times were very hard so they gathered the pieces of fabric from odd sources, old curtains, a fabric sample book, a lining from a coat…

Those quilts looked fantastic to me, the chance selection of fabrics, cut shapes and sewing techniques give them a slightly chaotic, sometimes comical appearance but then the old,  worn fabrics make them quite dark and melancholic.

I guessed this practice became popular because of the hard times, the need to spread the financial load, but I also remember thinking how neatly the process of making them symbolised the need for community in tough times.

Jeannette left the studio and I started contemplating a growing mountain of printed wooden strips in one corner of my studio. These pieces of plywood are off cuts, the by product of a seat I’ve been making for the last three or maybe even four years. The pieces vary in width, from about 120mm down to about 10mm, but they’re always 600mm in length.

I hadn’t been keeping them for a reason. Individually they were pretty unremarkable, but collectively they interested me, they’re fragments recording the rhythm of work at the studio. But it had become a really big pile, and they were taking up space in the studio.

So anyway, much later that night, I was speaking to Donna and the new artplay seat started to take shape. I wanted to use Jeannette’s story of the hardship quilt as theprocess and the mountain of surplus printed plywood strips and a recycled historical wood as the material.

So that’s how I remember the idea coming together, that was how the artplay seat started.

The previously mentioned Brook Andrew ‘Travelling Colony’ costumes transformed the backing cloth at the very end of last year.

The methodology devised for the project ( printing all over ready made garments ) saw the tables receive a top layer of a million sharp Wiradjuri diamonds in primary colours, over lapping to create an extraordinary patina and a continuity we don’t often see on the backing cloth.

The relationship between the geo Wiradjuri pattern and the native Yellow Rosella ( created for The Honourable Member series ) establishes a particularly intriguing chance association.

Dots, stripes, numbers, texts native and introduced botanical motifs also compete for our attention.

And further down, through the layers like an archaeologist you’ll find fragments of architecture that show the composition and structure that had existed before the Travelling Colony danced across the top of the tables.

Brook Andrew’s ‘Travelling Colony’ took over the studio in the last throws of last year in preparation for the Sydney Festival.

Brook consistently treats us with his projects; printing rooms full of ‘ancestral’ deck chairs, four metre soft trees, enormous scale screen prints, and this time performance costumes for a travelling colony – from Strong Men to Pole Dancers.

Well done to the lucky ones that managed to catch the performance in Sydney, Marina was there and loved the spectacle of the projections.

With Colony Brook conjures up an elegant way to give perspective on the our tough colonial heritage. This time looking at travelling exhibitions of ‘natives’ during the height of the empire.

It’s a delight to be involved in these critical discussions.

Brook Andrew’s Caravans will be at the Carriage Works until March 5th.

Late in the run up to Christmas a small contribution to womens fashion. Very impulsive, maybe just to balance the new men’s t-shirts or perhaps some ideas that needed to be resolved before the end of the year.

above – this photo shows the process for printing an amsterdam margarita dress, an exciting by product of this print process is the development of beautiful backing cloth sections.

above – photo showing the rack growing in the studio.

Colour palette is refreshingly of the momnet, steadfastly ignoring the fashion forecasting industry that seems only to restate what happened last summer in Europe.

Leafing through a 1950′s natural history journal we were collectively floored by the magnificence of a Yellow Rosella studio photograph. He stood regally poised upon a Camellia leaf with an eager look of great interest and enthusiasm, charismatic in the offset litho colouring that instantly places a 1960′s print. .

Captivated to reasearch the current habitat of the dear bird, often referred to as the Murray Smoker. We discovered they’re dwindling in numbers, ( though currently steady ) the fall of bio diversity around the Murrumbidgee and Murry Rivers makes his outlook very bleak. We may be one of the last generations to share our habitat with this bird.

This got us thinking that he really ought to have a respected voice in the happenings of his area, with so much at stake no doubt he would muster a very supportive campaign of like minded species.

The Honourable Member for Indi

The Honourable Member For Mallee

We’ve now started collecting their proposed House of Representatives from the Murray and Murrumbidgee areas in a limited edition series.

The Christmas spirit has fired up at the studio and finally, the gift of Stewart Russell’s super limited edition Men’s T’s are back. Brilliant ideas, very funny, challenging and beautiful.

So the quiet rhythm of t-shirt artisanship once more graces the studio, pushing the carousel to it’s limits – finally through the baker, on to a hanger and whisked off ( still warm ) to the Gertrude St store.

A ‘sneak preview’ of these happenings has been caught merely as proof of such a long anticipated production. Meanwhile the rest of us are found loitering a second or two longer than needed as we pass him, quietly hoping for some minor misprint so we can tuck one under an arm and award it to a loved one.

I now understand why Stewart’s T shirts have been spared the ignominy of light weight pastiche – the production values are far too scary.

It’s been a bit of a moral challenge choosing the base fabric for the new spacecraft T. We couldn’t bring the men’s T back in a half hearted way. The fabric must have structural & moral fortitude, but the quality of the design is the real key to the new psychology – buy better, buy less.

It’s a proud moment for the studio when you’re stopped in the street and beseeched to make Stewart see sense in getting on with a new men’s T. The chap wearing the favourite shirt (bought seven years ago), still being worn regularly but surely it can’t last for ever?

The quandary is getting something that has environmental and humanitarian integrity. It needs to be extraordinary and it needs to be really long lasting. We’ve alighted on a fabric that is 70% Bamboo 30% Organic Cotton & Fair Trade. Not because we want to put these labels all over what we do, but because surely this ought to be the base line for any production as we approach 2012.

We’ll keep posting the designs as they come through. Just sixteen Honey Eater t-shirts ever made ( 3 small, 5 medium, 5 large and 3 extra large ) 16 in the world and some of them will be in store this weekend !

- Stewart casually mentions that David Beckham owns a spacecraft t-shirt.

There’s been an incredible workshop going on in the studio this week with the Koorie Heritage Trust setting up hoodie project part 2.  We’ve had an amazing time helping them translate the graphics they’ve developed into printed garments.

Brook Andrew worked on the first hoddie project and dropped in while the group were printing. Loving the past and present photograph of Jyda in front of a Brooks Gun Metal Grey portraits.

It’s been a wonderful surprise to see the range of ideas, and the clarity of the vision.     photo above – Jyda & Creedence

Congratualtions to Jyda & Creedence, JP, Shannon, Dion, Arika, Jardi, Jack and Boedan who came from all over Victoria, bringing their stories and graphics to their hoodie designs.

Thanks to David, Nic, Anna and Dixon from the Koorie Heritage Trust. Good luck for the rest of the project and of course the big night.

The hoodies will be presented at the Koorie Heritage Trust on King Street later this month. Check Koorie Heritage Trust for details.

photo above – Arika                                                                                                                         photo below – Dion

On the next Monday we had a lovely chance to meet the crew from ABC 3 who wanted to do a bit of a feature on the work of the guys in to the studio workshop. The very gorgeous and tallented Arika bravely stepped up to be filmed, while the rest of us hid.

We’ll let you know when she’s on the telly.

While in the north east a few months ago I heard a great story from a friend who had just had an amazing visit from a thirteen year old indigenous girl with a back pack. This was the daughter of a neighbour who had fled to WA about 30 years ago after the theft of Ned Kelly’s scull from the Old Melbourne Goal.

My friend explained that the girl, after traveling solo by bus from north WA, introduced herself unzipped her back pack and handed it to him. The skull was wrapped inside, on route to be lab tested to confirm that this was in fact the true skull of the infamous Ned.

Weeks later as I waited in a cafe in North Melbourne, the front page of The Age claimed that ‘the bushrangers mystery had been laid to rest’!

Talking to friends the Kelly story is always an entertaining one – who we think he was and why his story continues to be remembered. Growing up in the same part of the world as Ned there were constant memorials to moments in the man’s life that I would walk past or come across in the bush, ‘the corner that Ned waited on to get the coach to beechworth’, ‘the pub he couldn’t go into’ etc.

More well known of these memorials of cause is Kelly’s last stand site in Glenrowan that you must drive past on the Hume highway. One day I pulled in and walked up to the tree Ned hid behind during his last stand before being captured by the police. The tree still stands tall in that gravelly arid place.

I took some lower branches and headed back to Melbourne to craft screens from the actual foliage. All went well and the Ned Kelly last stand tree is now the latest chapter of the studios botanical series of artworks.

Clara holding everyone up, adding one last detail to complete the latest addition to the QT foyer.

Stewart and Nic Graham discussed using these negative ply sheets, a by-product from the circlewall. The idea was to install the recycled panels in relief and use LED strips to create shadows and depth. I want one, it’s like a restrained Frank Stella.

It was the first time they’ve been able to stay in the new rooms. Must have been strange after staring at the renderings for so long. We’re seriously thinking about organising a weekend tour of the artwork at QT and maybe a tour of some of classic high rise architecture we’ve found on the Gold Coast. Check here the next time the Melbourne weather turns nasty.

The artwork & graphics for the floor corridors, elevators and lobbies are currently being installed, working down from 22, we’re now down to level 9. The corridor ceilings are my favourite.