SACHA Barker comes from a creative family, so it was inevitable she would have her own love affair with art.
However, the emerging artist’s dedication to painting changed course towards the end of her Bachelor of Design (Fine Arts) studies at UWA.
She discovered a connection with textiles and was selected to exhibit at this year’s Hatched National Graduate Show at PICA.
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READ NOW“In terms of art, this was my first textile piece and I’ve never considered myself as a textile artist,” Barker, of Nedlands, said.
“I’ve sewn for necessity to mend things and in my family we’ve done little cross-stiches for gifts. I’ve just loved the process of the sewing and I found a lot of meaning in that.”
Mindfield: The Sewing Seeds features seemingly floating fabric, hanging by black thread, with personal, disjointed narrative hand-stitched on it.
“It just started as small pages with the idea that when you write something down, there’s an emotional release and when you sew something out it’s even more because it takes so much longer to write it,” Barker said.
“All the pieces took a different amount of time. Some pieces took maybe five hours and others took a week of five hours a day.
“The biggest challenge was my own perfectionism. I wanted it to be perfect in every way. That was also a good thing about it, because I was determined to make fabric hang taut like paper which is almost impossible. Many people told me it couldn’t be done.”
Barker said she felt emotional seeing the work hang in the exhibition space because it was so personal.
“I’ve been told I need to share more and I’m definitely sharing more with this,” she said.
Barker will continue her artistic practice and test new ideas at PICA throughout June and July after being chosen as one of three Hatched exhibiting artists for a six-week Hatched Residency.
“I think it is important to be around so many great writers and thinkers about art to get people’s opinions while I’m making,” she said.
“I hope to engage with the public and other artists.”
THE ESSENTIALS
What: Hatched National Graduate Exhibition
Where: Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA)
When: until July 15
Entry: Free