Ann Rattey · Jo Day · Deborah Barrett
Anne Rattey
Ann Rattey grew up in a small, NSW country town but has now spent most of her life living and making art in Inner West Sydney.
Ann has exhibited textile artworks at Chrissie Cotter Gallery (2020), Seymour Centre, College of Fine Arts, Bundeena Art of Living and Chris O’Brien Lifehouse. Her collaborative textile work is featured on Arterie crockery as a fundraiser for Chris O’Brien Lifehouse.
While employed at the NSW Department of Education’s Centre for Learning Innovation, Ann developed digital learning resources, accompanied by teacher training, in association with Kaldor Public Art Projects, Arthur Boyd’s Bundanon and Vivid Sydney. Ann was a recipient of a NSW Premier’s Teacher Scholarship travelling to London and New York to visit major visual arts institutions.
Ann travelled to Japan, Indonesia, India and Europe observing first hand the work of textile artists and artisans involved in ikat weaving, print making, embroidery, batik, boro mending and shibori dyeing.
Ann has created theatre costumes for Black Swan Dance Company, Sidetrack Theatre and Red Weather theatre company. She worked with Spare Parts Puppet Theatre designing a mobile puppet exhibition that travelled throughout Western Australia. As a Khaki and Rose design partner she continues to design and make unique handbags in her Camperdown workspace.
Ann takes a riotous and rebellious approach to textile art sometimes slashing, ripping and hacking with blades and scissors to explore possibilities and create wearable art and mixed media artworks. She stitches intuitively with needle and threads, string, wool, plastic tube, rope and wire, celebrating the joys of asymmetry and the crooked line. Knots, loose ends and raw edges are boldly visible and the back of the work is often exposed. Works are nailed, tied and wired defying the conventions of embroidery. She often incorporates printing, painting and fabric collage and improvises with hand and electrical tools.
As a child in a small country town, Ann would say she had no concept of art. After many years as an artist and art educator she realises that her mother, grandmothers, aunts and their close knit of women friends were practising deep art traditions. They wove, sewed, embroidered and knitted a fabric of everyday life that could be passed on through generations.
Ann refers to her work as stitchery rather than embroidery. She loves traditional women’s embroidery but fine close stitching is not her thing. ‘I love the squiggle and the crooked line, I love the perfectly imperfect’ she says.
Ann is inspired by contemporary textile artists such as Junko Oki and Alice Kettle, who have expanded her understanding of contemporary embroidery. She likes to work collaboratively and is currently working with artists Deborah Barrett and Jo Day to present Journeys, a new exhibition at Chrissie Cotter Gallery 26 Oct—6 November - see below.
Ann joins with other artists to push the boundaries and to confirm a place for stitchery/embroidery in a contemporary art arena. Her current work focuses on Journeys both metaphysical and real.
Current work
Anne Rattey
When Ann Rattey was six years old she ran away from school because she was asked to draw an Easter bunny and she did not know how. For this exhibition Ann has thrown away her fear of drawing and, with her scissors as pencil, created wild animals in rich verde environments seen on her journeys through Africa and India. Ann has cut fabric scraps into shapes, collaged and appliquéd these, then painted and embellished them with needle and threads. Lines, squiggles, knots, lumps and clusters of stitches create textures of feathers, fur, skin and scales. The works can be worn, wrapped on the body or hung on the wall.
Childhood memories of abundant vegetables and fruit, grown by her father, and of the many small colourful birds that came to feed, have inspired a series of soft sculptures of fanciful colour, shape, and design.
Jo Day
Jo Day loves to experiment and discover how stitching and beading can reinvigorate, embellish and glamorise fabric in artworks and accessories. Her journeys to varied cultures have influenced her intricate, abstract works. She is currently creating 3D works using vintage and reclaimed fabrics.
Deborah Barrett
Still life and journeys are in their essence the opposite of each other. Strange new times call on memories and longings of journeys past, eating and meeting across the world and up the road, and of our own childhoods.
Deborah Barrett explores the tools of food and the produce of the garden using oils and ceramics. She draws from her sketchbooks and places icons and found objects together to create a personal narrative.
Upcoming shows and workshops
Three women, Three artists, Three journeys
Jo Day, Deborah Barrett, Ann Rattey
The back lanes of Newtown, encounters with lions in the Okovango Delta, the astonishing bead markets of Kenya and Tanzania and the fragrance of market spices in Morocco have all provided inspiration for Journeys, an exhibition presented by artists Jo Day, Debora Barrett and Ann Rattey.
There are purple crocodiles, leaping leopards, cloaks like surreally spotted goats, collages telling migration stories and paintings that fuse the exotic and the everyday.
The artists draw inspiration from real and metaphorical journeys to create their latest exhibition at Chrissie Cotter Gallery. The exhibition will showcase new works featuring painting, printmaking, collage, ceramics, sculpture, textiles and wearable art. It is full of joy and whimsy, does not take itself too seriously, and is not afraid to be pretty!
The exhibition will also include new works by Khaki and Rose, a design partnership of Jo Day and Ann Rattey. Based in the Inner West, Khaki and Rose feature hand stitching, unconventional embroidery, fabric painting and upcycling of precious discarded fabrics to create ranges of wearable art and home furnishings, with a focus on handbags, lamps and jewellery.
Wednesday 26 October—Sunday 6 November, 2022
Wednesday to Sunday 11am—5pm
More information: 0417 230 698