Exhibition explores emigration experience
The experience of migration from Scotland to Australia is captured in textiles in an exhibition by textile designer and University of Southern Queensland (USQ) PhD candidate Jill Kinnear.
Her Excellency Governor of Queensland Ms Quentin Bryce AC will open Jill's exhibition Diaspora: textiles as paradox at the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery on Saturday, 7 June 2008.
The exhibition, an outcome of Jill's PhD research on emigration, focuses on her role as a textile designer, and explores her Scottish cultural heritage of tartans and paisley.
'I use my own experience as an emigrant and a textile designer with a Scottish background to explain the experience of migratory dislocation.
'This work is about cultural transference and how when you emigrate you take your culture with you, but it is changed or transmuted by the place of settlement.
'I use the baggage x-ray machine at Brisbane International Airport to demonstrate visually this process of transference.
'The textile works in the exhibition are skilled and vibrant examples of this process.'
The works also reference Scottish social history of the 18th and 19th centuries, a time when Scottish emigration reached a peak. Theorist Homi Bhabha was a source of inspiration for the works.
'Bhabha talks about the Third Space, a space of cultural negotiation. This space is also relevant to the migratory experience: as an emigrant, it's a space you never leave. By emigrating you change everything.'
Ms Kinnear emigrated to Papua New Guinea (PNG) from Scotland in 1986 to run the textile department of the National Art School before moving to Australia in 1989.
She completed her Bachelor of Arts (Textile Design) at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee in Scotland in 1979 and completed her Master of Visual Arts at USQ in 2000.
She was awarded the prestigious Design Excellence Award at the Queensland Design Awards in 2005. Jill also received the Jean Clarice Searle Research Award from USQ in 2006.
Jill said she is grateful for the support she received from USQ over the three and a half years working on her PhD.
'The University has been incredibly supportive to me, through a Masters degree and now a PhD study. They have given me both moral and financial support,' she said.
'I am particularly thankful to my supervisors, Associate Professor Robyn Stewart and Dr Janet McDonald.
'The Public Memory Research Centre has been really supportive as has the Faculty of Arts research committee.
'I have had a really happy experience of studying here. It has been fantastic.'
USQ wardrobe supervisor and costume designer Carolyn Taylor-Smith drafted and constructed Jill's garment designs which are featured in the exhibition.
'Carolyn was wonderful to work with. Her work is highly skilled.'
Diaspora; textiles as paradox tours through NSW and QLD in 2008 and 2009 visiting major galleries in Ipswich, Rockhampton, Tamworth, Hawkesbury and Logan.
The exhibition opens at the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery on Saturday, 7 July 2008 at 2 for 2:30 pm.
Media Contact: Jane Urquhart USQ Media +61 7 4631 2559