Take Time Craft ACT 2019

 

 Earth Archive 11: from Soli, Cyprus  Woven tapestry with wool, cotton, silk, linen and metallic yarn 62cm x160cm  2017. 

 Documenting Soli: Earth Archive 11 Drawing on gesso on paper. Plant dyes, earth and ash pigments from the Paphos theatre excavation, Cyprus 62cm x 160cm.  $2500

Artist statement

Diana Wood Conroy has been a tapestry weaver since the 1970s, and her research interests now combine archaeology and contemporary visual cultures, especially Aboriginal ways of relating to country. She has been involved with Yolngu and Tiwi art exchanges over many years. Her study of ancient art (fresco, mosaic and textiles) in Cyprus and Greece since 1996 informs her creative work in tapestry and drawing. Her work is held in national and international collections.  

A story from Diana: Once just after my mother had died, I saw the fragments of a marble cut floor or opus sectile, in a ruined basilica of Soli, an ancient city of Cyprus. These marble fragments had formed a path for pilgrims moving on hands and knees down the aisle, looking for redemption. The pieces were worn and patched. I did a drawing at the time and this became the basis for larger drawings. I using dark grey earths I’d sourced from ash layers from the Hellenistic theatre site where I was working, as well as   pomegranate dyes from my garden in the Illawarra and fibre from local sheep and alpaca. The drawing became gradually translated into a tapestry, using more pomegranate dye on handspun wool, as well as metallic yarn and silk. The process of weaving is a comfort. The text is from the American writer Marilynne Robinson’s 2014 novel Lila, “What will I do without her, what will I do?”

Through being in ancient places in Australia and Greece or Cyprus  I have learnt a sense of time in the two meanings of Chronos  and Kairos. 

'Locals on Board': Wollongong Art Gallery October 2018 - February 2019

Diana Wood Conroy

Title: Whorl with fragment of tapestry

Tempera with Australian ochres and gouache on board with woven tapestry of wool silk and linen 60 x 80 cm

$650

Artist Statement

 Drawing, tapestry and archaeology have always been packed together for me. I learnt tapestry weaving while employed as an archaeological Illustrator at the British Museum in London. Since 1996 I’ve been involved in examining fresco painting in the excavation of an ancient theatre in Paphos, Cyprus, over annual seasons with the University of Sydney. I begin to perceive my home location in the Illawarra through the lens of the classical European past. This position was a response to Aboriginal friends who urged me to ‘look at your own dreaming, know your own country and ancestry’.  I weave through love of the intricate, thoughtful process of relating threads and patterns. The tapestry fragment placed above the painted whorl gives concrete evidence of time passing, attempting to make time and space cohere in the ‘flesh’ of the woven fabric. The patterned whorl is derived from a mosaic floor in a ruined basilica in Cyprus, painted with Australian earth colours.

Shadows and Fragments - Red Point Gallery, Port Kembla

Liz Jeneid and Diana Wood Conroy: Shadows and Fragments, Red Point Gallery Port Kembla July 11-28, 

See the works here

New article on "The Conversation"

http://theconversation.com/old-sites-new-visions-art-and-archaeology-collide-in-cyprus-84586

From Pafos, Cyprus

Travellers from Australia: artists in Pafos opened in the Palia Iliktriki or Old Powerhouse

 in Pafos in western Cyprus on Monday 2 October, a project for the Pafos 2017 European Capital of Culture.

I’ve been curating this with archaeologist Craig Barker from University of Sydney Museums over the last year. Craig is also Director of the Pafos Theatre Excavation Project. The work was all carried from Australia in tubes and extra large suitcases by a group of attending artists, and unfolded to cover the walls with visions alluding to the theatre excavation (Image 2 and 3).

One side of the main hall is the inner world of reflection, the other has more naturalistic representations. The long exposures by moonlight of the ancient theatre by Rowan Conroy made an icon painter almost weep with emotion. I loved Angela Brennan’s brilliantly coloured ceramics and textile, and Penny Harris’s fragile bronzes and was very pleased to have fragments of tapestry (4, “Among the Bones, music” tapestry fragment) derived from theatre frescoes, and my rubbings of the surfaces of the theatre, including inscriptions.

Strange that the very old monument adapts to digital technologies – animation and video – and also to sound. A mysterious composition by Stephen Ingham converted the textures of stone into the voice of the theatre.  The artworks are accompanied by archaeology, that documents with meticulous accuracy the traces that remain.

Since my first engagement with the excavation in 1995 I’ve wanted to bring my two disciplines and loves together – art and archaeology – so I stay for hours in the exhibition, always compelled by the shock of the ruin, but also by astonishment at the richness of Jacky Redgate’s haunting blacks and glimmers of light; Lawrence Wallen’s long slash of black charcoal concertina books which seem to indicate the abyss of time (image 8) and  by Derek Kreckler’s tilting figures and unstable Corinthian capitals.

It’s a potent interaction between two kinds of mindfulness, between artists and archaeologists.