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Anne Marie Power is amongst a number of highly esteemed and iconic studio textile artists who have found continuous peer group support and validation in Australia since the 1980s, but the intellectual and narrative content of her work identifies her as a singular figure. Her art speaks to an audience beyond Australian studio textile circles. It informs the shape of recent art and craft history in Australia, especially the impact that American-derived models of feminist art had upon Australian art in the 1970s. These issues extend to a commentary upon the placement of the domestic and the feminine in Australian national identity, the role of spirituality in a country frequently described as extremely secular, and the role of Catholicism in Australian public culture. However the issues are not simply parochial, Power engages with themes of international relevance: the trafficking and transmission of cultures, quotation and montage, transitional and undercultural adaptations, the relationship between the margins and the centre. Simultaneously she has an appreciation for the eloquence of the kitsch and the abject which is as alert and eclectic as Jeff Koons, if far more “lady-like”.
... Anne Marie Power emerged as a professional artist during a singular moment of promise for Australian studio textiles. The impetus of this fortuitous moment has sustained her throughout the next two decades, while the “scene” that she emerged from has been somewhat detached from the mainstream of Australian art at c. 2000, in comparison to the vangaurdist position it enjoyed twenty years ago. Throughout the 1970s, government support of the crafts grew rapidly, with massive expansion of tertiary courses, exhibition facilities and the development of public gallery collections of craft. “Craft centres” catering for both the production and exhibition of work were set up in many state capitals. Statewide “Crafts Councils” provided advocacy and support for an ever-increasing constituency of craftspeople. Power had a clear presence within this high profiled support for craft. Her work was regularly selected by curators for the major and influential surveys of outstanding craft that were a characteristic feature of Australian public gallery’s exhibition calendars during this era. This was not only a “golden age” for Australian studio textiles but also a period of intensely accelerated development for women artists in Australia. American feminist Lucy Lippard’s lecture tour in 1975, an official celebration of International Women’s Year, permanently changed the fundamentals of art practice and fostered a rethinking of the value and the placement of women’s art. Power’s work belongs to this flowering of Australian women’s art through clear references in certain pieces to ideas brought into cultural debate by feminists.
... Power’s career encapsulates virtually a quarter century of the history of Australian studio textiles and textile craft to the degree that when she came to curatorial attention at the beginning of her career, Power was a quintessential example of what an Australian (female) textile artist was expected to be and do. Her movement out from this base makes an interesting case study. Various factors have expanded the parameters of her art practice and ensured that she has survived the tangible diminishment of institutional and mainstream interest in Australian studio textiles over the last two decades. Her paper work brought a broader and more expressionist edge into the world of dolls, fairies, clowns, sequins and seed beads. Power has worked with moulded paper and constructions alongside textiles since the early 1980s. ... With the establishment of her own paper mill in 2000 at Airey's Inlet, a picturesque seaside resort built at the edge of a large tract of natural bush, Power can more thoroughly explore the medium of paper and make tangible contact with the Australian landscape.
In recent years Power has
gained a certain institutional status as an artist who examines the issue
of spirituality and Australian art. She has shown with the Creative Ministries
of the Uniting Church in Melbourne for example. In 1998 a shrine installation
featured in Faithworks an exhibition of contemporary Australian art referencing
spirituality in the Access Gallery of the National Gallery of Victoria.
This show responded to the concurrent Beyond Belief - an international
loan exhibition exploring the interaction between religious practice and
the emergence of modernism in twentieth century Western art. These issues
are the subject of worldwide debate amongst Churchpeople and artists. Power's
installation at Winchester Cathedral, part of the Cathedral's program to
proactively address the return of effective contemporary art to the Church
and worship environment, places her within this lively transnational discourse.
The previous four paragraphs are extracts from my essay on the recent monograph about Anne Marie Power, well known Australian textile artist and sculptor as well as a longstanding member and supporter of the Women’s Art Register. When asked to auspice a collection of extracts from the book for publicity purpose through the Bulletin, my initial feeling was to minimise the extent of the extracts – after all we want people to buy the book and consider some of the issues around writing the book.
The Telos series of publications are gratifying for both artist and writer to be associated with. As writer I can not review my own work, but I can certainly say that the production values of the book and all other titles from Telos are superb. These books are simply amongst the most physically beautiful books being published on contemporary art in the world. The design and photography is breath taking at times. It is exciting to see such skill and attention devoted to the often underrated medium of art textiles. Telos is a specialist publisher of titles related to art textiles internationally, documenting a medium that has infrequent exposure outside of specialist circles and these books seek to consciously educate the reader about contemporary textiles. They are intended for an international audience which extends from Britain to Europe to North America, Asia and Australia. Power’s monograph is part of a series of short profusely illustrated albums of the work of international studio textile artists. It is the first Australian title in the monograph series: both writer and artist are Australian and they are placed alongside British, European, North American and Japanese writers and artists. Anyone who is interested in textiles as a medium should visit the Telos website www.arttextiles.com. As documentation is still an issue about women artists and access to information an issue in terms of education and school curriculum, the Telos project overall commands attention as something in harmony with the aims of the Women’s Art Register.
Writing about Power involves its specific series of challenges, that differ with each assignment. These shifting challenges are those to be found in every creative task. I never regard my writing as advertorial for any artist nor am I a Clint Eastwood of the computer terminal drifting around the badlands waiting not for the next desperate mayor of a besieged city, but for the next artist’s ego. In Power’s case the specific challenge was that she is so well known, so well loved, especially in studio textile circles, that there was a whole constituency out there who knew what they wanted to read about her, and even how the artist should be approached. She has been so frequently written about, another challenge was how to approach the artist with freshness. Given the potential international audience of the monograph and the relative unfamiliarity of white Australian artworks to overseas readers, I took a broad rather than an intimate perspective in writing about the artist but setting her firmly into the context of Australian art in the wake of the feminist movement and the craft revival of the 1970s, which created a context in which Power’s art was able to flower. It is also an interesting challenge to look back at the recent past and try an identify possible patterns and trends. Unlike writing about art in the Renaissance, for example, there is not much previous professional literature to guide one, given that I had decided to write in a dissonant fashion to other texts about Power. This task was made easier by the fact that Power has always been an artist who has sought to expand her experience and has been particularly entrepreneurial. To use her as the key to an era and a medium’s experience was a plausible option. Particularly in the 1980s she worked on some extremely high profiled assignments. When other artists have sat back and lamented that they are passed over for Australia Council Grants, Power has sought to devise projects that could potentially attract potential funding – and she has succeeded. She is also a successful lateral thinker about private funding as well.
Power’s history has a particular connection to that of the Register. As she deals in memories and images, she has never needed to be convinced of its value. In turn the value of the Register to her was demonstrated in extraordinary circumstances. Whilst some work had been sent overseas to be photographed by Telos’s regular photographer, the artist’s studio, archived works, work in progress, reviews, catalogues and innumerable beautiful possessions both from her personal collection of artistic and nostalgic items and also items collected for future work was destroyed by a fire. The collection of slides and documentary material at the Women’s Art Register, which had been so useful during the writing of the monograph has taken on an even greater importance as the slides document works that no longer exist. This is not the first time that the artist has faced a major potentially devastating experience with courage. These issues are not articulated explicitly through Power’s work, but they provide an underlying sense of engagement with the deeper themes.
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