Radiant Pavilion contemporary jewellery event Melbourne, Queen Victoria Women’s Centre, September 2019.
50 pieces of work made from discarded medical equipment, household objects, silver and copper. One piece for each day of the Victoria Nurses’ Strike of 1986. The nurses won almost all of the conditions they went on strike for, but they and their families sacrificed a lot in order to bring about this improvement.
Not Plastic 1
Not Plastic 2
Not Plastic 3
This work is a reflection on our dependence on plastic with many of the components cast from containers and supermarket packaging.
Chips Like A Millstone
Lentils of Purity
Sweet Guilt
Original Tailoresses’ Hall, Melbourne
During 1882-83 the tailoresses in Victoria became unionised and went on a series of strikes. For Radiant Pavilion, a contemporary jewellery event in Melboune, I cast 2483 resin pieces from belts and buckles.
There were 2483 names of women in the membership book.
The work was exhibited in Meeting Room 2 at Trades Hall, Lygon Street.
Current female union members sent me fabric samples attached to these postcards that I implemented into the casts.
Current unions supplied this material about the strike.
I was proud to be included in Kylie King’s AJF article, The Revolutionary Object
https://artjewelryforum.org/the-revolutionary-object
211 cast resin plaster pieces filled this urn at the Wharepuke Sculpture Park. On the name of each piece was the name of a signatory of the third suffrage petition.
Bastion took over the principal bridge in Central Park, with each window representing a suburb, geographically positioned. A list of names again divided by suburb was printed on each muslin strip which was attached to the frame and floated in the breeze. The names are of the women who signed the third suffrage petition, resulting in the vote being attained by women in 1893.
1260 women from Wellington signed the third suffrage petition. In September at Toi Poneke in Wellington I hung chandeliers representing each suburb’s women from the ceiling in the gallery. The names of the women were listed on wallpaper sheets on the wall near each chandelier, linked with a thread.
In July 2014 I represented the 607 women who signed the third suffrage petition from the Wairarapa region with 607 cast domestic objects.
These were hung around the region in four different locations and brought together at Aratoi at the conclusion of the project.
I spent three weeks at a cottage at NZ Pacific Studios, Mt Bruce where I had won a fellowship.
Giovanni Tiso was kind enough to write a post about the work
https://bat-bean-beam.blogspot.com/2014/07/making-past-strange-justine-fletchers.html
The inaugural National Council of Women of New Zealand, formed in 1896.
In honour of this group of women I produced a set of objects for each of the 26 women – a ring, a pendant, an apron and a portrait. These objects were made of found objects and textiles.
