Stemming from studio activity during the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, Pages From A Lockdown Diary is a collection of artworks which measure and mark the passing of time, in works built up from daily repetitive actions and activity.

Carole Wilson and Tim Craker are two Ballarat based artists who utilise textile methodologies to create their work. Using techniques more often associated with sewing, knitting or the making of nets, thousands of knots and stitches are used to secure a variety of found objects together into curtains and shrouds, embroidered samplers and geometric arrays in both two and three dimensions. Both artists have undertaken a number of international residencies over the past ten years, during which they have gathered materials from diverse locations, forming a storehouse of items to be utilised for creative projects back in their home studios. The lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 certainly provided extended opportunities to revisit previous travel experiences, memories and materials. Both artists respond to the Japanese concept of mottainai – a sense of regret when something is wasted, and a belief that all materials and objects have an intrinsic value.

Tim Craker is drawn to the collected detritus of daily living – packaging in all its forms – which is then laboriously assembled into substantial and evocative sculptural pieces. As well as the marking and recording of time passing, the works exhibit his fascination with found objects, and the stimulus to combine and re-configure them. Pattern and the geometry of the Platonic solids are other touchstones for his work, as is the recycling and rescue of discarded materials with their embodied histories of production and use, diverting them from landfill.

Carole Wilson sources discarded maps and atlases which speak of a different era and a fast disappearing approach to sourcing information about locations and travel. In these times of smart phones and google maps, such printed items are rapidly becoming obsolete. She incorporates the techniques of domestic needlework and the politics of women’s lived experience, to undertake a critical reflection on craft practices. The meditative activity of carefully selecting, hand cutting and stitching the map components provides the opportunity to contemplate the rapidity of change in this era of globalisation, and offer a pause for thought through the appreciation of the simple stitch.