Narelle Jubelin

Narelle Jubelin's detailed and intricate petit-point embroideries fascinate due to their conceptual references and the range of connections they evoke, their existence as both objects and images, and the demonstrable skill and time required to make them. Her choice of a traditionally feminine and time-consuming craft to create small-scale images and her use of old, found frames carved by amateur woodworkers add a sense of vernacular history and suggest a valuing of the domestic and hobbyist over 'high art' traditions. These choices were, however, informed by feminist and post-colonial theory and in the 1980s and early 90s her embroideries of trade goods, historical monuments, old photographs, text from books and museum objects asked many questions about colonisation, trade, the circulation of objects and the ascribing of value. More recently Jubelin has referred to more personal narratives which intersect with the history of modernist design and architecture. As always in her work, which is often made for a particular site, the accumulation of images, objects and references sets up unexpected associations and links: ideological, visual, economic, historical.

Source: Art Gallery of New South Wales