un/conscious is a large-scale artwork comprising sixteen brightly coloured Fluffie canvases that form a kaleidoscopic wall of colour. Each canvas becomes a bridge to the next as dynamic patterns and pulsing waves of colour wrap soft recycled terry towelling around 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 labour. 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 cycles of creation, care, labour, death and renewal.

 

The textiles enveloping each canvas are reclaimed offcuts donated by Re/lax Remade, a Sydney-based fashion label. Originally vintage towels, these fabrics have traversed the journey of life, death and renewal. These discarded offcuts carry traces of domestic histories through generations of use holding echos of the women who dried their children, washed, folded and cared for the textiles. un/conscious gathers these material, personal and cultural threads into a vibrant meditation on memory, perception and the shared labour of women across generations.

 

Within the work, colour is acknowledged as a phenomenon emerging through the interaction of texture, light and perception. As the viewer stands before the work, the act of looking becomes participatory: memories, associations and inner reflections are woven into the colours, patterns and countless loops of cotton thread. 

 

The work is a contemplation on the domestic labour of women that incorporates mirror fragments to draw you in as an important piece of the story. Inviting you to delight in yourself amongst the nostalgic textiles that nurtured us.

 

Created over a six-month period using thousands of pieces of vintage textile offcuts, un/conscious emerged during a significant period in the artist’s life, while Jamie-Lee Garner was pregnant with her first child. The work developed through an intimate engagement with her experience and the materials at hand, reflecting Garner’s broader practice and ongoing exploration of life in a female body. 

 

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.”