un/conscious is a large-scale artwork that features sixteen brightly coloured Fluffie canvases that form a kaleidoscopic wall of colour. Each canvas is a bridge to the next as dynamic patterns and pulsing waves of colour wrap soft recycled terry towelling around each sculpted canvas.

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The process of creating Un/conscious took the artist over six months and thousands of pieces of vintage textile offcuts. During this time, Jamie-Lee was pregnant with her first child and found herself working within a lineage of textiles that have been traditionally considered “women’s work.” The long and rich history of women’ working with textiles extends far beyond craft; it is a record of lived experience, a means of storytelling, resilience, and for many it has been a way to earn a living.

 

As Stanislava Pinchuk writes, “Unlike oil paints, some form of needle and thread are the art materials most commonly and widely available to women throughout history. They have given us the power to decorate ourselves and our interior environments, and to document ourselves in that process.”

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The textiles wrapping each canvas are reclaimed offcuts donated by Re/lax Remade, a Sydney-based fashion label dedicated to circular practices. Originally vintage towels, these fabrics carry traces of domestic histories through generations of use, touch, and care. Un/conscious gathers these threads, material, personal, and cultural, into a vibrant meditation on memory, perception, and the shared labour of women across generations. 

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Colour is treated not as a surface quality but as a portal that emerges through the meeting of texture, light and perception. Light itself carries no colour or brightness; it is a series of pulsing waves of electromagnetic radiation interacting with our neurology in order to create what we see as colour. In a sense, we place a little of ourselves into every colour we encounter. As you stand before this work, your act of looking becomes part of it: your memories, associations, and inner reflections are woven into the countless loops of cotton thread. When you observe these colours, what do you see?