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It would be difficult to overlook the metaphor of weaving, living on and across the islands. In laying out a practical image of these water bound shores, we already begin to establish the two axes which are the language of the weaver: it is so long, by so wide, north to south, east to west. Within this perimeter we move between these axes, sometimes directly, using the roads that follow primary coordinates, with a weaver's logic; sometimes indirectly, across grasslands, by forest trails, disused tracks, vacant, overgrown blocks, abandoned building sites, wide salt marsh shores, more like the aberrant weavings in vine and palm seed stem, knotting and clinging and guiding the weaver by its own inclinations.
Tricia Dobson practices both these ways when she weaves. Her processes not only give rise to exquisite forms, but honour the materials that urge those forms into being. Particularly when she uses the more unruly vines and palm seed stems, you can feel this conversation between the artist, who has one idea, and the materials that have their own; you can feel the tussle and the harmony, the new agreement that comes about through attention and tacit understanding.
Tricia's early environmental weaving began with her residency at Lines in the Sand on Minjerriba in 2014. There, her loom was the branches and twigs of low banksias along the south facing rise overlooking north gorge. She has used a similar technique in several works with Canaipa Mudlines, using the pale taut lines of raffia to create "windows" onto the distance, in one work, and, in another, a meandering line that contrasted dramatically with the burnt out forest at Melomy's, in 2017.
Tricia Dobson, 2014, Tree Drawings, North Gorge, Minjerriba (Srtadbroke Island), as part of the Lines in the Sand artist residency and festival (Photos, Jo Duncan).
Tricia Dobson, Forest weavings, 2017
(Woven orbs at Rocky Point, 2018)
Tricia has been conducting a series of weaving workshops at RICArts (Russell Island Community Arts), situated within the old avocado grove at Kennedy Farm. This past weekend she introduced participants to weaving with natural fibres, the kinds of materials that have their own ideas about things. As I walked into the workshop toward its conclusion, what struck me was the uninterrupted transition of form, from the raw, slightly loosened bundles of fibres - palm seed stems, corky passiounfruit... - to the lightly knotted articles that nestled in the arms of their makers: made, but not manufactured; woven, but not gridded; tangled, but not anguished; strong, but yielding.
Participants in Tricia's weaving workshop, September 7, 2019.
Afterthoughts:
Hands and twine belong together
If hands knot and shape the lines, what do lines do to hands?
In the absence of radiating lines, movement from centre to edge is random and non-hierarchical;
How much must be enclosed, before you can tell an outside from an in?
Does the edge hold the form, or does the form hold the edge?