un/conscious is a large-scale artwork comprising 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 softly around the sculpted surfaces.

 

Working within a lineage of textile practices historically associated with “women’s work", Garner draws attention to the long and complex histories embedded within domestic materials. 

 

The textiles enveloping each canvas are a waste product reclaimed from Re/lax Remade, a Sydney-based fashion label. Originally vintage towels, these fabrics have traversed the journey of life, death and renewal, many times over. The discarded offcuts carry traces of their domestic history and generations of use, the colours and patterns echoing memories of the people who used, washed, folded and cared for the textiles. un/conscious garnered these material, personal and cultural threads into a vibrant meditation on memory, perception and labour of women across generations.

 

Extending far beyond notions of craft, textile practices have functioned as records of lived experience, labour, resilience, and for many women, a means of survival and economic independence. The repetitive and labour-intensive process of wrapping and composing these reclaimed materials are intertwined with reflections on domestic life, care, labour, death and renewal.

 

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.”