TELLING TALES – A COMMUNITY STITCH PROJECT
Various Artists
Online
Telling Tales was a community stitch project led by artists Jo Fife and Sera Waters, in collaboration with Walkway Gallery Bordertown and The Riddoch Arts & Cultural Centre. It provided an opportunity for anyone with links to our beautiful region to share insights, knowledge, tales from past happenings, family histories, regional species, weather events or mysteries via the medium of stitch, to become part of a unique collaborative artwork.
This artwork, painstakingly constructed by Fife and Waters, is now on display in the foyer of The Riddoch and can also be viewed online.
There are stories about losing gum boots in the mud, neighbours who contributed to the communities and lives around them, memories of attending local schools, children describing their favourite places to go when they are happy or sad, the stories that connect Boandik peoples to this place, and grandfathers who built a road between Bordertown and Kingston. Overwhelmingly the stories are about families, connection to place and generational memories.
“People’s generosity in contributing to this project, and the heartfelt, personal stories that poured out, along with the care and time each person put into their embroidery, was a delight. Each story read, and every embroidery assembled, brings us a little closer to our community, captures the personal and heartfelt tales that fall out of the pages of history, swallowed by time and outsider’s perspectives on what is important.
Telling Tales feels like an ode to those domestic arts practiced by our foremothers, whose care and creativity not only kept homes together, but were artists and makers without ever being celebrated for it. And it feels like a community sharing something that was bigger than any one person’s story, but is part of the fabric, the history of the people who live here, in the South East of South Australia, and their collective contribution to this place.”
– Serena Wong, Curator, The Riddoch Arts & Cultural Centre
