Cecilia Heffer

2-20 Oct, 2022 Barometer Gallery, Sydney Craft Week

Curated by Liz Williamson, Barbara Rogers, Michele Eliot and Melinda Young

Tide investigates spatial qualities unique to lace giving material form to the ephemeral and intangible observed in a landscape.

For this work, I have revisited an earlier piece created in 2010 from time spent in Wamberal Beach on the Central Coast, Darkinjung Country. The original circular lace motifs were traced from stones collected on my walks; their delicate markings represented through silkscreen printing and natural dye. The history of my gestures (walking and stitching) serves as a ground to hold memory.

The new surface is highlighted through further hand stitching and embellishment to create a novel (p)lace marker.

Dimensions: 280 cm x 80 cm

Materials: silk organza, dye, silkscreen print, machine stitching onto a soluble backing

Photo credit: Finn Marchant

Transform, Shirts Reimagined, Sturt Gallery, Mittagong, July 23rd -September 10th,2023

Barometer Gallery, Sydney, October 6 - 22. Sydney Craft Week

Paper Lace Collars is a new body of work informed by a Research Fellowship at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Australia (2023). This represents the initial iteration of an ongoing body of research exploring Lace as Sound.

As an entry point into the research, I conducted observational studies into a selection of lace prickings through textile print techniques. Braid patterns were translated into woodblocks by the artisan studio Tharangini in Bangalore, India. The teak wood blocks provided a unique haptic quality as mark-making tools, enabling me to explore combinations of patterns freely.

The work considers sustainable, recycled methods that explore upcycled paper waste. The relationship between printing, photography, and lace patterns has long influenced my practice. The blue pigment in the prints references a historic photographic blue cyanotype method used to record lace in early pattern books.

Acknowledgements. Powerhouse Museum, University of Technology, DAB Research Fund

Dimensions: vary

Materials: paper waste, woodblock printing, machine stitching

Photo credit: Finn Marchant

RMIT Design Hub, June, 2022

The exhibition Reimagining (P)lace marks the completion of my PhD from the School of Fashion & Textiles at RMIT. The research presents a final installation, Stitches in the Air, a collaboration with animation artist Damian Gascoigne together with a suit of new works that emerged through this process. This study contributes to new relationships between contemporary textile practice and place as it transforms how we understand, experience, and learn through making.

This work includes a suite of paper waste lace works that contemplate the transience and impermanence of our times. In these works stitching becomes a form of drawing, exploring subtle configurations of space and place that seek location amidst a world in an increasing state of flux.

As nuanced meditations, they explore (p)lace marking in new ways by giving agency to materials that go unnoticed in our daily lives. Discarded shredded administration paper of disrupted text, numbers and colour-coded excel spreadsheets was painstakingly stitched into a new narrative. The material transformation from waste to lace gives form to the intangible human relationships that make the systems of a workplace.

These quietly subversive works took inspiration from Invisible Cities by writer Italo Calvino whose citizens wove coloured threads between valleys and mountains. Once the threads were too dense to pass through, they were abandoned, leaving a scaffolding of suspended lace as a gentle reminder of our collective impermanence and fragility.

Acknowledgements.

RMIT Supervisors,

Associate Professors: Robyn Healy & Scott Mayson

Dimensions: vary, large scale to small

Materials: this works considers recycled paper waste , machine stitching, animation

6 - 24 October, Barometer Gallery. Sydney Craft Week

Curated by Liz Williamson & Barbara Rogers

essamplier - an experimental cloth

The French word essamplier, means an example, a piece of cloth on the side of a design traditionally used as a teaching aid to learn to embroider. Before the invention of printed designs, embroiderers and lace-makers turned to samplers as a way of recording their work. The piece submitted for the SECOND LOOK exhibition is a treasured sampler that I use as a point of reference for my work.

The hand-embroidered floral motif embodies lace-making histories (material knowledge) layered over a deconstructed contemporary lace test created from shredded office waste. The sampler examines unconventional materials as points of connection between myself and the places I live and move through.

I travel regularly to India, taking students to learn weaving, woodblock printing and embroidery in artisan textile workshops. For this piece, I commissioned fashion designer Sudhir Swain to embroider a floral lace motif using traditional artisanal stitchwork.

The piece is even more precious now as we cannot travel; it holds memories and intangible cross-cultural exchange between textiles, people and place. (www.vam.ac.uk)

Dimensions: 30cm x 40 cm

Materials: Paper waste, machine stitching, artisan embroidery, cotton thread.

Petite – Miniature Textiles

Wangaratta Art Gallery, Victoria

17 June - 16 August 2020

Eucalyptus lace is a homage to the bush created from leaves collected during storm damage in the Sydney region shortly after the devastating fires of the summer. It is a maker’s response to collective loss through a particular way of marking time and place.

Leaves were cut and stitched into a matrix of geometric patterns reminiscent of aerial views of paddocks in drought, a center of green hope remains. The stitching process released eucalyptus aromas evoking the familiar presence of the bush.

Noticing left-over scattered leaf shapes a second spontaneous eucalyptus lace unexpectedly emerged, closer in its evocation of a fragile natural environment.

Dimensions: 15cm x 20cm

Materials: eucalyptus leaves, machine stitching, soluble backing

28 September - 3 November, UTS Library

Sydney Craft Week, 11 Oct 2017

GAFFA Gallery, Sydney Craft Week, 5- 14, Oct, 2018

Data Lace is a large-scale lace created through shredded paper waste from my workplace. The work explores new ways to reimagine lace as a contemporary (p)lace marker through the materials that surround us in our daily lives.

The work comprised the key research projects undertaken during my Phd at RMIT.

The work explores notions of impermanence through the interplay of absence and presence. Labour once recorded in confidential systems is eventually discarded and replaced.

Audiences warmly responded to the installation, finding a sense of identity and connection to their place of study and work. Students and staff searched for their names and were fascinated by the transformation from waste to lace.

Photo Credit: Jackson Mann & Paul Pavlou

Dimensions: 200 cm x 90 cm

Materials: paper administration waste,machine stitching, soluble ground