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(Cross and Crown) c.1914

(Cross and Crown) c.1914 takes crochet — a delicate practice that both decorates and protects — as a canvas upon which a bold statement is made against the dominant religious and imperial systems that shaped Australia’s involvement in World War One. Wartime knitting and crochet in Australia was a means by which women worked to support soldiers and the wounded from the home front.

Here, the feminine solidarity and resourcefulness of a nation living on rations can be viewed as an expression of delicate activism. The textile is strikingly contemporary in the subversion of medium and message, craft and art, the act of making and questioning of an artist.