Visual artist Hannah Gartside works with worn, collected fabrics to create installations that embody the rich history and memory of used garments. Drawing on her dressmaking skills and former career as a costumier for Queensland Ballet, she constructed a series of moving sculptural works that aim to capture the materials’‘accrued lived experiences’, such as their usage and methods of production. From her studio in Brunswick, Naarm (Melbourne), Gartside discussed how learning to listen to the material informs her artistic practice, and the ability of fabric to convey and inspire emotion.

Hannah Gartside uses fabric as a vehicle to transport us to another place and time. Closely engaging with the smell, texture, sound and movement of a particular material, Gartside imagines those who have come into contact with it, the places it has been, its function, and how it has been cared for. Through these labour intensive processes and treatment of materials, Gartside invests in the work a quality of concentration, devotion and care.

Embedded in feminism and material culture, Hannah Gartside uses vintage and found textiles to create installations, sculptures and costumes. Skills of dress-making, patchwork quilting and fabric dyeing accrued during her former career as a theatre costumier at Queensland Ballet are elevated to the conceptually rigorous. Both deeply personal and fiercely communal, Gartside’s works engage fundamental experiences and emotions of our human condition: longing, tenderness, connection, desire and wonderment. With these textiles, she creates dynamic, poetic and dreamlike sculptures that express the rich history of the garments.