Sera Waters: Domestic Arts
ACE Open
This diminutive title belies the breadth of human history and years of dedicated practice surveyed within. ‘Domestic Arts’ unpicks Sera Waters’ show presented earlier this year at ACE Open. Texts by Liz Nowell and Miriam Kelly, and a reading list from the artist are spliced by reproductions of sculpture and textile pieces that ‘challenge conventional expectations of craft work’, writes Nowell. Waters’ embroidery and engagement with language addresses holes, both in the representation of women and also Indigenous culture, in her personal history and the broader narrative of Australian identity, and suggests that memory can be thought of as a stain on our material world, or personified as a thread carried from past into present.
