Deborah Prior, Grandmothers remembering Acacia blossoms falling after the rain, 2022, woollen blankets, wool and cotton yarns, eucalyptus dyed wool, glass beads, studio ephemera, 220 x 129 x 150cm. The University of Western Australia, Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art.
Blanket and body ecologies: fragile bodies and difficult questions begun ‘on the sheep’s back’.
Deborah Prior is an Adelaide-based textile and performance artist whose Feminist practice explores themes including bodily agency, chronic illness, climate justice and the personal and social histories of domestic work. She meticulously knits, stiches and unpicks threads to address the deeply anxious state of attempting to live well on an unwell planet.
Woollen blankets are a recurring material and motif within Prior’s practice. On The Third Day is a body of blanket-works that share an intimate relationship with the (artist’s) body – alluding to the vulnerable states of illness and sleep.
In a country said to have ‘begun on the sheep’s back’, Prior’s work also addresses our urgent ecological and social crises, while interrogating the painful realities of (ongoing) colonisation in Australia.
These works are the outcomes of Prior’s three-week residency in the Vulkathunha-Gammon Ranges National Park, having been awarded Country Arts SA’s annual Grindell’s Hut artist-in-residence in 2021.
This iteration of On The Third Day includes new works since its original presentation at JamFactory Seppeltsfield in 2022.
In 2020, Prior commenced work on a long-form climate focused project. Then a global pandemic began. In the same year she suffered multiple injuries after a cycling accident. As Prior found herself immobilised with her injuries – much of the world was also resigned to a similar state of lockdowns, isolations and infections. Prior’s work is embedded with empathy for those who are immobile, unable to escape the physical impacts of disasters and conditions of poverty, famine and conflict exacerbated by climate change. On the Third Day continues the artist’s reflections on body fragility within fragile landscapes. Rebecca Freezer 2022, JamFactory
