Sewards captures the childhood memories of her mother’s experience in wartime Russia. It reveals the human impulse to create order and beauty in the face of displacement and the chaos of war. As a young child, her mother lived in a displaced persons camp of Northern Germany and recalls the time she and her own mother found an abandoned white silk parachute in the neighbouring woods. From this parachute they made clothing and little white silk ribbons for her mother’s hair; her symbols of comfort and hope.
This beautiful story is told through works on paper, paintings and an installation of a rare WWII white silk parachute canopy, which breathes soul and history into this exhibition.
fortyfivedownstairs
2 to 13 July, 2013
Melbourne
What have we lost?, 2013, unique state, linocut, monoprint, archival digital print on BFK Rives, 50 x 70cm. Photography: Chris van der Spuy
Courtesy the artist and fortyfivedownstairs
