Sarah Sepe
Back to the gallery

Initially I felt quite negative about producing work under the 'Necrotex' label. Death as a theme seemed so personal and maybe not somewhere I wanted to go. However thoughts of the exhibition prayed on my mind, I wanted to take part but I felt more inclined to flip the theme of death over and look at life instead. Textiles surround us from birth when we are wrapped in a blanket throughout life in the form of clothing, bedding, furnishings and decorations through to the dressing of a body after death and this was the theme I found interesting.

I found inspiration for making this hanging from an article in

Selvedge magazine. The article talked of the recycling of cotton in Japan and the way a garment would be reworked using scraps of cotton from other garments many times over....'the process of de-constructing, re-working, layering, stitching, reinforcing and casting -off was a continuous and ongoing process.' Thus a garment would contain scraps of parents, grandparents, great grandparents clothes all stitched in together. Now these assembled pieces of cloth have been discovered as 'art' and they are often exhibited inside-out...'We admire the hidden side, the interior, the part that was never meant to be seen.'

My hanging is a patchwork of the scraps of fabrics which I keep for no real reason, they all tell me a story ....there are old sheets that my Nanna turned sides to middle 25 (50?) years ago, the kitchen towel I bought when I first set up home with my husband, his old shirts, cotton bandages, bits of my children's clothes, dress making leftovers: mine and some passed to me by my sisters over the years ... all joined together in overlapping patches and linked with plain running stitches using utilitarian threads.

The 'right side' seemed much too jolly and so to evoke a feeling of distance from the inherent life in this rag bag of patches I have turned it around, it's now viewed from the other side, the wrong side....allowing the colours of the fabrics and shapes of the patches to be seen through the backing of loose woven linen. The lines of stitches can be read as footpaths between different patches, different times, different places. Where the backing has been cut and darned, little windows allow flashes of colour (life) to shine through. Hanging from the bottom are tassels made up of all those really useful little snips of fabric I kept, supported with buttons from old shirts.