Skid-marks

Kath Fries, Skid-marks, 2009, charcoal and floorboards, gold embroidery thread, canvas, glass, feathers and rose thorns.

Skid-marks was exhibited in the group show Queen and Country. This installation traced a sense of continuing frictions of British colonisation. Charcoal was rubbed into lacerated canvases and topography of the floor. Gold embroidery thread knotted and trailed around the installation. A blacked pane of glass lent against the wall, trapping and semi-obscuring a circle of thorny rose branches. A shredded piece of truck tire completed the arc. 

Queen and Country, 2 - 14 July 2009. Tanya Ljubic, Megan Yeo, Jessica Geron, Lexi Harper, Kate Churchyard, Kath Fries and Ally McKeller. Gaffa Gallery, 1/7 Randle St, Surry Hills NSW 2010

Pulse

A site-specific installation for Castaways Sculpture Festival on Rockingham beach, Perth, Western Australia, May 2009. Recycled materials including second hand clothing, yarn, upholstery off-cuts, textiles and fabrics were bound into 20 meters of the existing fencing along the Rockingham boardwalk.

Pulse reflects on our rapid consumption of textile products driven by the fashion industry and the often ignored environmental impact of fabric production and post-production. The world's demand for synthetic fibers has nearly doubled in the last 15 years, causing the expansion of manufacturing energy-intensive processes that require large amounts of crude oil, producing harmful emissions and toxic waste. Driven by consumer demand for cheap, new, fast products the garment industry has a notorious reputation for sweat-shops, relying on low-paid laborers working in poor conditions. However, consumers appear to place little value on these products - dumping about two million tonnes of clothing in landfill every year.

Pulse suggests that human existence is bound to our environment even as we destroy it, how we can continue along this destructive tangent of blind consumption?