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Rosie H. Cook

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Asialink+AsiaSoc.23March(1)

2017 Asialink Arts Residency

Crazed Puppets 04  Crazed Puppets

bundengan-01 This is not a Kowangan

aptccarn5 #APTCCARN5

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Art in the streets of Tainan... I have to confess I do wish that I lived and worked in Tainan instead of Kaohsiung. I get so thirsty for a taste of authenticity — Kaohsiung often feels very manufactured and a little soulless. Wandering the back streets of old Tainan you catch a glimpse of past lives (especially those amazing tiles...). #tainan #taiwan #tiles
Doorways of Tainan. I’m a sucker for them; I dragged my guest here to see them but really the pleasure is all mine 👹 #tainan #taiwan
Tainan does not mess around. Walk from train to breakfast shop, immediately stumble across amazing sights and scenes. These performers were getting ready for a show in Pingtung County — this was as much information as I could gather since they didn’t really speak Mandarin and I don’t speak Taiwanese! No filter or photo editing — this is the kind of beauty Tainan always seems to deliver whenever I am here. #tainan #taiwan #chineseopera #performance #livingheritage
Reading my very own copy of Absolute Humidity, in the beautiful warm light of the setting sun, sitting on the HSR on my way home from a rainy day in Taipei. I opened it at random and immediately read a sentence that really resonated: “I do believe that the person who feels at home in their own home is fundamentally unethical” (Lantian Xie, interviewed by Tess Maunder). Just this afternoon @greywhisky and I had been discussing how I have never felt “at home” anywhere, since from early childhood I’ve always been an outsider, on the move, and how this has guided my life choices. I love my adopted country of Australia profoundly, and yet I don’t feel it is ethical for me to live there — but is it ethical for me to live anywhere? I loved the notion of it being ok and even ethical to always be slightly uncomfortable, especially as I do not have an official home anyway. Lantian’s thoughts on belonging — its nature as “pliable, acerbic, violent, and utter fiction” — reflect his experiences as a migrant based in Dubai, and his 2016 installation work “Ceiling fans, stray dog barking, burj Ali” recreates spaces, feelings, quite literal atmospheres and climates, drenched in the sweat of colonial ghosts, which also make me think of James and the makeshift offices he works in throughout Central Asia and Africa... a lot to process and that’s just a single interview read at random on a sleepy train ride home. @tessmaunderprojects I love what you have brought together with this book. Thank you 😍 and thank you @lantian_xie 🙏 #absolutehumiditybook
It’s so lovely coming across previous repairs in garments I am working on. Interesting that the thread seems darker on the front and still quite light on the back — I imagine it is just an effect of time and dirt, plus it probably seems much brighter against the contrast of the dark green patch — but it’s fun to speculate! Also interesting that the repair happened before the hem was sewn over it... #textiles #textileconservation #conservator
The haze has lifted slightly today — enough for one of our plants to cast a gorgeous crisp shadow, reminding me of our shadow puppet performance earlier this year, The Sound of Shadows by @bianca_gannon_music and @juma__adi. Makes me happy to check out #thesoundofshadows and relive those memories 💖
I love how every costume we unpack is like a surprise goodie bag — what will we find? What types of fabrics, garments, accessories and decoration await us? Today we found dozens of corroded studs, so we made an expedition to the Metals Department where they kindly provided us with the skills and materials we need to clean off that pretty-yet-undesirable green gunk and hopefully slow down its eventual return. #conservator #conservation #textiles #rosielovesteal
I may be not even a quarter done with current project... but I have two more white canvas artworks already waiting in the wings, this time with mould damage instead of flood damage. I guess that means more gels! #textileconservation #conservator #textiles #everythingisgonnabeallwhite #rosiesallwhites
I thought crossing off 20 costumes would feel better than this... we have a month to do the remaining 69 costumes 😱 #conservatorproblems #conservator
Cleaning the discolouration and damage due to a leather belt. Top = before cosmetic sponge, Bottom = after. I guess the reddish-brown is better than the blackish-brown, but it’s still looking very sad. I wish I had time to research what the hell is going on with these leather belts to affect so many items in this collection. #textiles #textileconservation
What a way to end the week!! Came home to a wonderful, WONDERFUL present from my boyfriend (currently working in Nigeria 🇳🇬). I’ve been wanting to improve my textile identification skills for a while and I found Fabric for Fashion: The Swatch Book online — James bought me both this book full of fabric samples (after I got knocked back by The Book Depository) and its beautiful companion The Complete Guide. They are everything I hoped — there are pages and pages of swatches including ones to compare natural and man-made fibres. I’ve included photos of the different silk samples but they cover a huge number of natural and synthetic fibres 😍 I love it so much already, and it’s going to be amazing in helping me identify and understand the very random contemporary textiles that arrive on my workbench — as well as when I’m trying to buy support fabrics in the markets here. 💖💖💖@iamagloworm you are the BEST 💖💖💖 #textiles #textileconservation
The Textiles Conservation department currently lays hidden behind a mountain of boxes. So far we have completed conservation for 16 outfits — 70 items — and filled 10 boxes. Once a box is packed and labeled, we have to find somewhere safe to put it, since we can’t just stack them alongside the empty boxes piled high in the corridor! Keeping track of the box locations is therefore another important column in our inventory spreadsheet. Outfit #17 is on the workbench today, hoping to finish it today, along with another box of accessories, so we can finish off the week with 12 full boxes 🤞textiles #textileconservation #conservator
One of my favourite morning tasks to start the day is ironing damp cotton I washed overnight, and watching it turn from dark and wrinkled to light and smooth, like blue skies over blue waters. NB: this is a support fabric not a textile artefact! #textiles #textileconservation #blue
Cruddy black dyes 😔 Today is 10/10, the Taiwanese National Holiday, and I am enjoying some cross-stitch whilst watching Netflix. This kit actually has travelled the world a fair bit before it got started: it was one of a stash in the home of my friend Robin’s stepmother-in-law, in California if I remember correctly. When Robin was cleaning out the house, in I think early 2017, she put a bundle of needlepoint kits up for grabs on Facebook. I picked out this and another one, and Robin kindly held on to them for me until I had a home address to send them to in late 2017, at which point they arrived in Australia — and then were packed and shipped to Taiwan. It’s been slow progress as whilst I love doing embroidery on the couch, it does mess up my neck and wrists... so finally, today, 10/10/2018, I threaded up the black thread for the first time — and it sheds, shatters, and snaps at the slightest tension! I am used to seeing historic black embroidery threads crumble and break, due to the iron which is often used in the dyes, but until now hadn’t thought about how it might affect my own embroidery — or how old this kit might potentially be! The fact that it is entitled “Oriental Women” was probably the first hint that it may not be a 21st century design... #crossstitch #textileconservation
We have been getting through a LOT of cosmetic sponges and certainly finding that not all sponges are made alike. Even the same brand will have variations from batch to batch — we just realised the lighter colour sponges (on the right) are more prone to disintegrating into tiny grains as we work. Noted: we will be careful to get the slightly darker orange ones (on the left) next time... although who knows what we will find next as there isn’t exactly a consistent source of materials around! #textileconservation #conservator
Why it’s probably a good idea to avoid storing a leather belt directly secured on top of a cotton jacket 😭 If anyone has any recommended reading/case studies about treating this kind of discolouration I’m all ears and eyes... #textileconservation #textiles #leather #conservator
Oops... give me the power to buy fabric and this is what will happen 😬 #textiles #textileconservation #rosielovesteal
#Repost @auralarchipelago with @get_repost ・・・ ALL donations to Aural Archipelago this month will be forwarded to earthquake and tsunami relief funds in Palu and surroundings. Thousands are homeless and need food, water, and medical supplies, including the brilliant musicians from Palu and Donggala who have shared their work with us. PLEASE, please donate by heading to http://www.auralarchipelago.com/donate/
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