The Threads of Change
Interview by Lauren Forner - Mona Magazine
It’s not often you see intricately woven textiles billowing from desolate, deserted mining sites, but if you do, it’s likely they have been handcrafted by Kelly Leonard, Broken Hill artist and arts administrator who works on Wilyakali and Barkindji Country. Kelly’s career began in the Riverina at the age of 17, and she has gone on to forge a unique path in the arts, incorporating textiles into her political activism and, as an arts administrator, driving initiatives for equity in rural communities for women and diverse populations.
Over your career, you've collaborated with a range of different practitioners, including writers and other artists from diverse backgrounds, which artists or thinkers have been influential in shaping your work and ideas?
German Master Weaver, Marcella Hempel, taught me weaving from the ages of 17 to 21, at the Riverina College of Advanced Education in Wagga Wagga. Marcella had received training from Margaret Leischner, a teacher at the Dessau Bauhaus Design School in Germany. Marcella migrated to Australia in the 1950s, and was an important figure in the Studio Art Movement in the 1970s in regional Australia. Marcella said she regarded herself as a product of Bauhaus philosophy in search of a socialist utopia. Marcella passed on to me the ideas and philosophy of this lineage of these women weavers, most importantly, the idea of listening to the material speak.
I began to shift my practice from a deeply traditional, Bauhaus informed one to a more conceptual environmental feminist perspective around 2017. At the time I was reading the work of philosophers such as Timothy Morton and Grahame Harman. This led to an on-line collaboration with Dr Greg Pritchard, a regional artist and writer. Over the year we developed a ten page woven and stitched text book called Slow Book Haiku.
A series of seminars, Becoming the Future, held at the CAD Factory In Narrandera, introduced me to the work of Mark Fisher, author of K-Punk, which enabled me to understand something of myself in relation to neo-liberalism. The speculative fiction that was explored by academics at the seminars, most notably the writing of Donna Haraway, Karen Barad, Ursula Le Guin and Octavia E Butler, has also shaped my work since then.
It sounds like your work has always been informed by progressive thinkers, when did you discover art as a vehicle for the political?
I grew up shaped by a family that valued social justice. I have always been influenced by eco-feminists like Deborah Bird Rose and Val Plumwood, and I went back to uni to study in the mid-nineties at the Canberra School of Art and discovered I could use my art to say what I needed to say, (in spite of the political fall-out), about feminism and about the body and also about our treatment of the environment. Textiles are politically loaded, they are not neutral. Ideas about gender, race, colonialism and capitalism are inherent in textiles. How textiles are produced and how fibres are sourced are important considerations. Out here, how much water is extracted from the Barka/Darling River to grow cotton is an important question because it impacts on the environment and communities.
In March-June this year, I was part of the Weaving Matter: Materials and Context exhibit at the Australian Design Centre that focused on experimentation with weaving materials and using them to translate political, social, personal or environmental concerns into weavings. Textiles are charged and I think using them to carry a political message adds power to artistic delivery.
And some of that messaging around environmentalism is quite bold in your exhibit Curation of Shadows and work developed in your Art of Threatened Species residency, too. Why are art and landscape so intricately linked for you?
The decision to stop selling my work freed me up to develop a more experimental way of working. I grew up in a Central West NSW town called Mudgee on Wiradjuri Country, and went back to live there again in 2016. The nest-in-the-hills town I knew as a kid had gone, replaced by big industry open cut coal mines, hi-vis clothing and a general air of complacency about the impact of fossil-fuelled extraction on the environment.
When he was studying coal mining communities in the Upper Hunter and communities affected by drought, environmental philosopher, Prof. Glenn Albrecht, came up with the term, Solastalgia, to describe the way someone feels when their home environment changes in a way that is distressing. He was studying coal mining communities in the Upper Hunter and drought communities. He also proposed an antidote: sumbiosis, respect for the interconnectedness of life and all living things. Making art relieves some of the anxiety I feel about what we are doing to the environment and climate change, my sumbiosis. Making work in the environment grounds me, I feel connected to all I can sense and see.
The environments and communities you have lived in have clearly been influential in your development as an artist, have you experienced unique opportunities being a rural artist?
Living out here and being at the front line of climate change means any changes in the environment immediately register. Responding to this, for me, usually means oscillating between hope and despair. There is an intensity out here and without that intensity and passion in people, fuelled by the intensity in the environment, nothing can create change.
Recently the Far West has seen a number of alternative energy projects developed including solar, wind and the mining of lithium and cobalt, used in energy storage. Being sunny for 3,622 hours per year, Broken Hill has the opportunity to align art projects with solar power production. In 2022, the Environmental Research Institute for Art (ERIA at UNSW) and the Broken Hill Art Exchange held a three day event in the regeneration area of Broken Hill to showcase solar powered art.
Filmmakers have mined the trope of the unknown and unforgiving landscape and characterised the people that live here as a bit feral and lawless since Wake In Fright was made. An exciting partnership between West Darling Arts and Screen Broken Hill called the Arts & Media Hub, is aiming to provide locals with a real opportunity to be able to tell their own stories and that is a powerful thing in overcoming these wider public ideas. Community radio is another form of broadcasting gathering real momentum out here and giving locals a voice.
The Far West has a number of iconic, niche festivals that collectively brand our region as being a culture magnet for visitors: Broken Heel Festival and the Mundi Mundi Music Festival being two of the major ones. The local music scene is quickly developing a signature Broken Hill style and a reputation beyond our region with collectives of local musicians making work on and about Wilyakali and Barkindji Country.
I undertook a residency in Italy as part of an international network of paired artists from remote and isolated locations, funded by the Arts Territory Exchange, and collaborated with a Norwegian artist, Beatrice Lopez, to develop work shown in Italy. This is a good model for isolated artists to by-pass the expectation that we should aim to exhibit in metropolitan venues. The reality is that we can directly reach international audiences from where we live.
Of course in commenting about opportunities unique to rural and emote artists, I am also going to add that we need support - we need resources, funding and skills development training. Funding needs to come from an equity perspective. Everything costs more out here because of the sheer distances between places: fuel, airfares, freight and a limited ability to access resources.
Access and funding seem to limit creatives in many rural locations, but do you consider there to be additional barriers for female artists in rural areas?
Definitely. Statistically, female, regional, middle-aged artists earn less out of any other category of artist. Many reasons may account for this including breaks in practice needed to raise a family, care for elderly parents or to work in an alternative field to earn an income, and simply be not enough venues or organisations supporting women to exhibit or earn artist’s fees.
I would also say that women in remote communities have an even more difficult time. Broken Hill is over three hours to the next regional town, Mildura, which is over the border in Victoria. There is no cluster of regional towns with professional creatives and pooled resources like in some of the larger regional areas of New South Wales, like the Riverina or Northern Rivers. It’s harder for artists especially female artists to be able to access time, childcare and transport in a more isolated area to meet face to face for support.
Traditionally, Broken Hill was a union town run by the Barrier Industrial Council. Women were excluded from the power politics and for a long time married women were unable to work. Sometimes it still feels like the town has a residual effect of this patriarchal attitude. I think diverse and female artists out here need to hustle harder and be more tenacious than their urban counterparts. You have to be hungry to push yourself. Kin (your art family) are harder to find and you need to develop strategies to maintain connections with them when they exist across regional distances.
With artists already facing these challenges, how do you think COVID changed the artistic landscape for those in rural communities?
In a wider sense it really increased the digital divide out in the Far West, where I live. People with resources, skills and network access were able to maintain or develop connections. Those without, were really isolated. Covid was a hyper-digital reality for many people and those with on-line businesses or services to offer in the arts world, benefited. Having a home studio and a solitary practice allowed me to take advantage of the blocks of time made available through the restrictions. My practice was not dependant on external systems.
Covid re-introduced the concept of ‘making-do’, re-using and re-cycling. While these ideas were not new, they gained importance during the pandemic. I was unable to access a lot of materials and used up all of my yarn ‘stash’ during this time and used whatever I could get my hands on, including the local Broken Hill bell wire, (used in mining). COVID made us value the tactile nature of craft activity and there was a resurgence in textile making that pleased me.
In regional NSW, I observed the formation of small, localised art ‘cells’ amongst artists during COVID, like the Sunflower Collective that was formed between four of us in the Riverina, Far West and Blue Mountains. It forced us to form a collective consciousness, causing us to shift the focus onto our own backyards and, with this, was a greater interest in art that references the places we inhabit. Across the professional arts sector, COVID has impacted on the administrative load for art projects, adding to complex risk management plans to mitigate the effects. Even though Covid appears to have passed, it has become an in-grained social threat, which has consequences for both the work of artists and the world of arts administration.
Mona Issue three 2023