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Rachael Wellisch
Indigo art

Softest Hard #2 (2019)

76 x 140 cms

Hand-made paper, from indigo-dyed salvaged textiles (cotton bedsheets)

Rachael Wellisch_EnfoldedSky_5 copy

Enfolded Sky #5 (2019)

87 x 135 cms

Digital print of indigo-dyed, salvaged textiles printed onto textiles made from recycled plastic bottles, recycled timber broom handle support.

Wellisch_Tome_10

Tome #10 (2020)

76 x 140 cms

Hand-made paper, from indigo-dyed salvaged textiles (cotton bedsheets)

Rachael Wellisch indigo artist

Undoing What Was Done #3 (2017)

150 x 120 x 11 cms

Time, indigo and recycled materials – textiles, Perspex, plywood, timber.

Photograph by Andrew Willis.

Indigo textile art

Indigo Bound and Dipped #2 (2017)

55 x 55 x 7 cms

Indigo dyed cotton mounted onto layered plywood

Textile Art

Enfolded Landscape #2, #7, #6 (2019)

100 x 150 cms high

Digital print of indigo-dyed, salvaged textiles printed onto remnant textiles, recycled timber support

Rachael Wellisch indigo

Recuperated Material Monuments #4 (2019)

 dimensions variable, 13.5 cms high

Indigo dyed, layered, salvaged textiles

rachael wellisch textile art

Tome #1, #2, #3 (2020) 

 #1, 76 x 140 cms; #2 #3, 76 x 186 cms

Hand-made paper, from indigo-dyed salvaged textiles (cotton bedsheets)

Racheal Wellisch textile artist indigo dye

Recuperated Material Monuments #14 (2019)

30 x 17 x 20 cms

Indigo dyed, layered, salvaged textiles

Australian artist Rachael Wellisch uses salvaged textiles and indigo dye “to create work responding to concepts around The Anthropocene” [the most recent geological period where for the first time humans are the agents of change]. Considering how humans “work around’ the environment, her art considers the social and environmental impact of her materials. 

 

Firstly, where are you based and where do you work?

I’m based in Brisbane, Australia. My desk, books and textiles completely occupy the single garage of my small home, regularly creeping out into the living room and dining table. The art-making also extends through the laundry and into the backyard where I dye fabric. My family are mostly sympathetic to this arrangement. 

 

What is your background in textiles?

I completed a fine art degree in 2016, however I’ve learnt most of my textile skills through practice. I went through art-school as a painting major, but am one of those naughty contemporary painters who doesn’t use paint. I consider the majority of my work as falling under the umbrella of ‘expanded painting’, as I often think in painting terms, consider dyeing as painting into the fabric and have been recently ‘pulp-painting’ to make hand-made paper from textiles.

 

How do you describe your work?

I use salvaged textiles and indigo dye to create work responding to concepts around The Anthropocene. I make sculptures, installations, wall-based work, videos and performance, that all loosely cohere around transformation and connection.

 

What is it about Indigo dye that appeals to you?

The process is truly magical and the history is fascinating. As a commodity, demand for indigo was central in colonial exploitation and slave trade, then it eventually fell victim to industrialisation with the development of synthetic indigo, and most recently has regained popularity during the ‘material turn’. Indigo has many different cultural associations, and the transformations that occur in an indigo vat have been used historically to reflect the spiritual transformations in human rites-of-passage. Indigo has to undergo a series of chemical reactions in order to become soluble as a dye, so it doesn’t exist without human intervention, making it an interesting character when thinking about the connections between nature and culture. The alchemy of green leaves transmogrifying into a copper sheened, brown liquid, which can transform cellulose and protein fibres to a yellow/green and then oxidising to the beautiful indigo blues, is just intoxicating. I could go on… but these are just some of the richness that make it a wonderous material to work with.

 

Using indigo and salvaged textiles makes your portfolio of work look very cohesive yet your art takes many different forms. Is there an underlying theme? 

The broad underlying theme is the relationship between human behaviour and the natural environment. Indigo is a potent motif for working through ecological themes as it has connected humans with the environment through the cultivation and processing of indigo plants for over 6,000 years. It also occurs in different plant species all around the world, and whilst requiring a complex set of conditions, the skills appear to have emerged simultaneously in different places in prehistoric times, so it offers a sense of connection, and continuity.

Using salvaged textiles rather than virgin materials is Statistics offered by sustainability advocate, Jane Milburn, in her 2017 book Slow Clothing suggest that Australians buy an average of 27kg of textiles and also discard 23kg every year. 

 

 Can you briefly describe the process of creating a piece? 

I sketch, make samples, document all the ‘fails’ and take thousands of photos for reference and reminders. Most of the work I’ve made builds on a previous idea or process. While working through one project, I get ideas for the next, either through the making or the research. For example, I made a large-scale installation of dyed, stitched and draped household textile waste – materials that would have gone to landfill – into a ‘walk-through landscape’. As a loose interpretation of a landscape painting, I drew on the concept of ‘atmospheric perspective’. This is where particles of water in the atmosphere affect the perception of colour, for example hills in the distance appearing blue and so, in a painting, receding blues simulate this phenomenon for an illusion of depth. After this, I made a series of wall hangings from photos of the installations, that were printed onto textiles made from recycled plastic bottles.

 

Can you talk us through ‘Undoing What Was Done’ please? 

Continuing experimentation from two previous works, this work was intended as a meditation on value, labour and materials. Found fabric was dip dyed in indigo, and then circles were drawn into the fabric, by unpicking and removing some of the threads. These removed threads were then contained in a small transparent box made from salvaged Perspex and plywood was a way of elevating the scraps, just as a specimen might be preserved in a vitrine. Slow, deliberate, perforating action, which rendered the fabric more vulnerable through ‘undoing’, contrasts with the usual building up and layering of materials in a painting. While I contributed to, and took from this piece of fabric – a discarded object with its own history – I hope to highlight its fragility as something of value or a source of unique potential. Cycles and continuity are recurring themes and I often use circles with this in mind.

 

I know this is a very broad question but how long does a piece take?

Most of the work I make is quite laborious, and in some cases takes many months. I frequent thrift stores, car-boot sales and Reverse Garbage (a large warehouse shop on-selling commercial waste) for my materials. Making dye vats and dyeing can take days to achieve the darkest shades of blue. Cutting, stitching or constructing installations are meditative and slow. The longest to make are the dyed, layered, cut, pieces of fabric which form the series titled Monuments. 

 

Do you have any advice to aspiring textile artists?

I think it is important to consider the chain of production for the materials you choose to work with, as well as how this relates to themes in your work. What is the social and environmental impact of what you work with? As artists, we feel compelled to make, but who made your chosen materials, where they are made, and under what conditions are important considerations.

 

What is your career highlight to date?

I love making and travelling, so have found residencies rewarding, and I find every opportunity to exhibit exciting! Even though I am in the early years of my art career, I have been fortunate to exhibit in Australia, the UK, Austria and Ireland. In 2018 I had a wonderful experience at an artist residency in Budapest, followed by exhibiting in Vienna, with funding assistance thanks to Arts Queensland.

 

http://www.rachaelwellisch.com

https://www.instagram.com/rachael_wellisch/