Arabella Strachan: Soft Touch

This series of patchworks is a playful experiment with colour and texture, informed by the earth’s visual texture and colour when seen from above. Inspired by aerial views of the landscape and recent vision of lava flows in Iceland, coastlines and salt lakes, as well as areas that have been farmed, burned or mined.

Making sense of our impact in shaping the earth, then creating imagined sculpted textile surfaces that react to that strange beauty in both the broken and natural land formations. In this age of great human industry and intervention in the ‘Anthropocene’ we are coming to terms with our role in climate change and our impact on the surface of the earth. These created landscapes are soft and friendly versions of, which in actuality may be scarred and fragmented beyond recognition, but still, have some strange fascination and beauty.

Access

St Heliers Street Gallery is wheelchair accessible. Gendered toilets are available within the Convent Building. Accessible and gender-neutral toilets are available at other locations within the Abbotsford Convent Precinct.

Please also see the Convent’s COVID Safe Plan here.