Selling Yarns

Australian Indigenous textiles and good business in the 21st century

 

Speakers

Valerie Kirk: Biography

Artist, Head of Textile, School of Art, The Australian National University

Valerie Kirk was born in Scotland and studied at Edinburgh College of Art, then Goldsmith's College, University of London. She first came to Australia in 1979 to work as a weaver at the Victorian Tapestry Workshop in Melbourne and subsequently was Artist-in-Residence in Portland, Victoria and Busselton, Western Australia working on exhibitions, community tapestries and commissions.

In 1991 Kirk was appointed Head of Textiles at Canberra School of Art. Here she initiated the major textiles projects Shift and Challenging ideas of cloth continued to exhibit nationally and internationally and completed an MA (Hons) with the University of Wollongong. Solo exhibitions were held in 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2004. In July 2006 she will have a solo exhibition, Leaving and Returning at the Warrnambool Art Gallery, Victoria and teach a tapestry Master class in conjunction with the Festival of Tapestry.

The Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, the ACT Legislative Assembly, the Canberra Museum and Art Gallery, the National Gallery of Australia and the Museum and Art Gallery of Northern Territory have purchased major works for their collections.

Current themes in the studio work include migration, ideas of place and identity in relation to global movement of people and perceptions of self/home in a rapidly changing world. She uses images of the salmon as a symbol of movement and travel, elements of the natural environment and traditional textiles to create tapestries and drawings.

Since 1995 Kirk has been guest lecturer with Textile tours to Vietnam and Lao PDR. She has lectured on Vietnamese textiles at the Asian Arts Society and the National Gallery of Australia.

Her achievements have been recognised through the Canberra Times Art Critics Award, 1998, the Inaugural Muse Arts Woman of the Year Arts Award, 1999 and an Australia Council New Work Award, 2000. The Telos Portfolio Collection Vol. 25 'Valerie Kirk' published in 2003 gives an overview of her work and an on-line exhibition of recent work can be viewed at: www.americantapestryalliance.org

Three major commissioned tapestries, woven in 2005 to highlight the prize-winning research of Nobel Laureates associated with the Australian National University are on public display at University House, Canberra.

Valerie Kirk is the convenor for the Collaborations session at 3:35 - 4:55 pm, Sunday, 13 August 2006.