Caroline McQuarrie
About This Site

• 2022
• Woollens and Worsteds
• This Blasted Heath

• 2021
• The New Sun

• 2019
• Prospect Fearful Folio

• 2018
• Prospects Fearful

• 2017
• Tunnels, pits, pools

• 2015
• Waiuta
• Homewardbounder

• 2014
• No Town
• Elegies (for the faded)
• Waiuta Model Village

• 2012
• Back Stitch (Flying Geese)
• Ghuznee St Art Billboard
• Artifact

• 2010
• Reasons for Silence

• 2009
• This is the First Day of My Life
• How To Fight Loneliness
• This Bouquet
• Swerve

• 2008
• Untitled

• 2007
• A Singularity

• 2005
• Woven Seam Binding Stay

• Curating
• From the Aether

• Publication texts
• This Blasted Heath
• The New Sun
• Tunnels, Pits, Pools
• Homewardbounder
• Reasons For Silence

• Info
• About the artist
• CV
• Contact
• Main

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Copyright 2007-2022

• Built with Indexhibit

Woollens and Worsteds. 2022
Wool, recycled wooden broom handle
150 x 75 x 3 cm

The unwritten history of women’s role in primary industry in Aotearoa in the 20th century is the focus of 'Woollens and Worsteds'. Taking written material and visual imagery from historical research, and an imagined story of a mill worker, 'Woollens and Worsteds' aims to explore the Petone Woollen Mill’s material history. The entire work is created from scratch, with a hand woven wool fabric base embellished with wool embroidery. The front of the work celebrates the public face of the company and the physicality of the mill, while the back imagines a more personal story of a female mill worker.

'Woollens and Worsteds' was made for She Shed, 2021 Blumhardt curator, Dr Bronwyn Lloyd’s dream space of wool craft. Featuring the work of seven contemporary makers; Vita Cochran, Lizzy Leckie, Caroline McQuarrie, Rona Ngahuia Osborne, Steven Junil Park, Daegan Wells, and Georgina May Young; this exhibition demonstrates the timely revival of heritage craft skills and the value of slow crafting.

Located in the historic Petone Settlers Museum on the Petone foreshore, this exhibition highlights this versatile, dynamic and nostalgic material through the many forms created by this diverse collection of makers. Wool becomes the foundation cloth to tell stories about identity, cross-cultural exchange, and connectedness to nature. It even becomes a woven page to record the experiences of women working in primary industry in Aotearoa.

Several of the works in She Shed reveal the artists’ knowledge of every aspect of the materials they use. In other works, concern about the impact of consumerism is evident through the artists’ desire to prolong the life of old and discarded materials through patching, shredding, dyeing and recomposing the wool, transforming this most resilient of natural fibres into something new.