The New Quilt 2024 at the Hawkesbury Regonal Gallery

A few of us visited The New Quilt exhibition at the Hawkesbury Regional Gallery in Windsor this week, and timed our visit to catch up with our member Val Nadin for an in depth look at her quilt ‘Fractured Landscape - After the Flood’. 

Val showed us how she captured the colours and movement of the debris that collected around the damaged landscape of the flooded Yarramundi Bridge over the Nepean River, using what she had on hand. It is close to home for Val, and the evidence of the flood is still there, a constant reminder.

The exhibition is presented by Quilt NSW.  An online gallery of the whole collection, can be viewed on the Quilt NSW website,  and you can purchase the beautifully photographed catalogue online too. We recommend an in person visit to the gallery if you can. The exhibition is open until 23 June 2024.

 

‘A Fractured Landscape - After the Flood by Val Nadin considers the destructive power of nature and, in particular, when the Nepean River burst its banks in 2022 and inundated the Yarramundi bridge.

Val’s interest in quilts began in 1980, while she was living in Singapore. She developed her skills and technique in both traditional and art quilt-making over 40 years. She has taught many classes, judged exhibitions, and worked on Valuation Committee for 25 years. Many of her works are in Australian-themed series, for example, ‘Convicts and Soldiers’, ‘Bushfires’, ‘Drought’, and more recently, ‘Floods’. Val’s quilts have been exhibited across Australia and internationally. Her favourite techniques include strip piecing, and the inclusion of her own hand-dyed fabrics and found objects such as teabags, plastics, and beads. She is currently working on a series of small quilts, using fabrics identified with specific cultures, such as Australia’s First Nations, Indonesia, France, England, and Africa.’