Betty Musgrove’s multi-media practice encompasses contemporary digital modes of textile production and traditional techniques - embroidery, tapestry, cross-stitch and applique. Her work pays homage to the long, rich tradition of women imparting their wisdom and skills in these historically underappreciated art forms.
Over the past five years Betty has explored how ancestry, genetics, social constructs of the family and skills imparted within the domestic sphere shape identity and inform the role of traditional textile practices both personally and in the broader historical canon.
Drawing inspiration from her family’s matrilineal textile collection and photographic archive, supplemented by interviews with her mother and maternal grandmother, Betty creates small-scale handmade works juxtaposed against large digitally printed banners to draw the audience into a dual experience – creating a space to meditate and marvel at the complexity of textile skills at both a monumental and intimate level.
3 Patron Saint of Juggling Life’s Bullshit (2017)
Embroidery, watercolour pencil, ink, graphite. Approx. 23 x 23cm