Exhibitions Ann Ryan Flora, Fauna and Other Unrelated Stories 10th March 2021 - 27th March 2021

Ann Ryan was the winner of the Exploration Emerging Artist Award for 2020.

Working predominately with textiles and simple cotton thread, guest artist Ann Ryan creates collages that interpret and present both the fashion world and popular culture with an affectionate irony.

Created from the artist’s own extensive collection of fabric remnants, Ryan’s images explore notions of salvage and memory, both personal and cultural, and incorporate visual elements from a diverse range of global style movements including 1960s fashion templates, traditional Japanese hand stitching techniques and even the ubiquitous Australian tourist tea towel. Wonderfully feminine and whimsical the resulting juxtapositions of pattern, form and colour playfully celebrate the aesthetics of both the humble and everyday as well as the luxurious outputs of high fashion.

Ryan’s methodical process of collecting, selecting and stitching-together salvaged fragments from once loved garments, upholstery and pieces of antique haberdashery serves as a metaphor for notions of sustainability and gives a nod to the slow fashion and visible mending movements.

Full of dream-like possibility Ryan’s vibrant and highly detailed images take the viewer on a truly joyful journey of memorabilia and imagination.

Ann Ryan is a Melbourne based emerging artist with a background in retail fashion, having been a head buyer for Georges Department Store in the 1980s. More recently Ann has dedicated herself to developing a practice that unifies her interest in fashion and sustainability, completing a Diploma of Visual Art from Victoria University in 2011. She has exhibited in a number of solo and group exhibitions since graduating. This will be her first solo within a commercial gallery context.

Catalogue Essay by Phe Luxford
As an artform collage necessitates a very particular way of looking at the world, or more specifically, of looking at the smaller, individual elements that make up the whole. It requires of an artist the ability to become a kind of gleaner, gathering up and storing away any small item that seems to speak to them with resonant possibility. Driven by an inclination to fashion some new narrative from seemingly unrelated aspects of the real world, collage tends to result in unique and often surprising hybrid amalgams of subjects, styles and cultures.

While most typically sourced from the pages of old books, journals or magazines, for Melbourne artist Ann Ryan inspiration lies within the snipped cast offs, faded keepsakes and once loved garments collected from both her own life and bestowed upon her by friends and family. Within the glass cabinets that line the walls of her studio, boxes, plastic containers and bags burst with textile remnants, each sorted and labelled according to pattern, print, texture or the whim of the artist.

Ryan possesses an innate feeling for the quality and value of textiles. Her many years working within retail fashion has allowed her to observe the shifting qualities of style and fashion movements and affords her an insight into both the beauty of things well made and the tragic waste that occurs within the industry. The act of repurposing her textile elements serves as a means to embrace the ethics of the slow fashion movement and creates opportunities to celebrate the significant role textiles play within both personal and shared social histories.

Fabric by its very nature is intrinsically linked to the human experience, providing comfort, protection and self expression. Each item holds within it stories of lives lived, of past relationships, of places or significant events. Attuned to these histories, Ryan playfully juxtaposes divergent patterns and colours, textures and yarns to invent characters and narratives that transform these disparate elements into new retellings.

Slowly and methodically tacked together with intentionally large stitches and visible loose threads, patterns of silky flowers coalesce with the coarse thread of upholstery, tropical fish swim alongside scraps of summery cotton and waratahs and watermelons precariously balance on top of silhouettes fashioned from tourist tea towels.

This process of layering and manipulation results in images that are at once discreetly humorous and achingly beautiful. Her cast of goddesses, nymphs and nobility possess a kind of trans-global aesthetic, in part due to the diversity of fabrics being brought together. With the fecundity of Botticelli’s Primavera, the finery and elegance of a Rococo portrait and the retro carnival spirit of Carmen Miranda each figure speaks of an inner life full of memories, dreams and possibilities.

Through the act of reclaiming, repurposing and valuing what might otherwise have been tossed aside, Ryan has managed to manifest new life and meaning. It is this ability to find kernels of possibility and pleasure within small unrelated parts that make her textile collages so very pleasing. Her images celebrate the many detailed fragments that come together to form a richly woven and jubilant experience of life.

ANN RYAN PROFILE
DOWNLOAD BIO / CV (PDF)

Ann Ryan
The Duchess and the Butterfly I 2020
collage mixed media
100cm x 80cm
(framed size 104 x 84cm)

Ann Ryan
The Duchess and the Butterfly II 2020
collage mixed media
100cm x 80cm
(framed size 104 x 84cm)

Ann Ryan
Best in Show 2020
collage mixed media
87cm x 59cm
(framed size 91 x 63cm)

Ann Ryan
Alarme 2020
collage mixed media
81cm x 41cm
(framed size 85 x 44.5cm)

Ann Ryan
Listen Up 2019
collage mixed media
76cm x 57cm
(framed size 80 x 61cm)
IN ARTIST STUDIO

Ann Ryan
Oh Boy 2019
collage mixed media
76cm x 57cm
(framed size 80 x 61cm)

Ann Ryan
Long Neck Beauty I 2019
collage mixed media
81cm x 41cm
(framed size 85 x 44.5cm)

Ann Ryan
Long Neck Beauty II 2020
collage mixed media
81cm x 41cm
(framed size 85 x 44.5cm)

Ann Ryan
Long Neck Beauty III 2020
collage mixed media
81cm x 41cm
(framed size 85 x 44.5cm)

Ann Ryan
Sea Nymph I 2020
collage mixed media
42cm x 150cm
(framed size 46 x 154cm)
IN ARTIST STUDIO

Ann Ryan
Sea Nymph II 2020
collage mixed media
42cm x 150cm
(framed size 46 x 154cm)

Ann Ryan
Seashell Goddess I 2020
collage mixed media
79cm x 54cm
(framed size 83 x 58cm)

Ann Ryan
Seashell Goddess II 2020
collage mixed media
79cm x 54cm
(framed size 83 x 58cm)

Ann Ryan
The Women 2020
collage mixed media
43cm x 89cm
(framed size 46.5 x 93cm)