Two friends and I travelled down to Sale, in Victoria to view the latest Annemieke Mien exhibition. It was a three hour drive, so we decided to stay overnight, so it was not such a demanding travel day.
It was worth the trip, it was a retrospective of all her work from the 1970's to today. There was work that I had never seen before and it was displayed beautifully. The gallery is a stylish, modern building and the display took over the entire gallery, there were many rooms of her work.
Her most well known work took up one of the walls as you went in.
Freedom by Annemieke Mein (1986) |
There was also a room showing her early work, you can see how she started and how her ideas had progressed.
Starlings (1978) |
I loved the way she has kept meticulous sketches and samples for her work. They were all on display too. Below are an example of her progress with baby birds.
She can even make a fly seem compelling.
There were many display cases like in the photo above showing the drawings, fabrics and threads.
I decided to take a lot of close up photos because there are many pictures of her entire pieces but I am interested in seeing the detail.
Of course, I had to take a photo of one of her fish. The date says 1993 - 2021, apparently during Covid Annemieke decided to finish some work that she had put aside.
Queen Snapper (1993 - 2021) |
Here are some of the other photos that I took.
They even brought her furniture and items from her studio and set it up in the gallery.
Annemieke Mein has just celebrated her 80th birthday but she is still working. Her latest work features labels, apparently she put the call out for people to send her clothing labels.
3 comments:
Lucky you!!! How I wish I could see her work in person. I have her book and drool through it quite often. According to her web site her husband says she has some sort of debilitating condition which curtails much of her creativity now. She and Michelle Gallagher are my stitching heroes.
I think she must have sold many copies of her first book, Magpie Mumblings. I bought the second book that was all about the exhibition as well. I had also heard about the trouble she has but she obviously can still work because there was plenty of recent work on show.
I didn't know she had a second book - could you share the title? I'd love to get one if I can find it.
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