Lucy Irvine
Textiles
Accredited Professional Member
Lucy Irvine is a Scottish artist, researcher and educator who has lived in Australia for the past two decades. She is currently Head of Textiles at ANU School of Art and Design where she also undertook a practice-led PhD. Lucy studied her Masters of Fine Art at the Victorian College of the Arts and holds a first-class Honours from Leeds Metropolitan University in the UK.
Lucy’s work is held in major textile collections in Australia at the National Gallery of Victoria, Tamworth Regional Gallery and Ararat Gallery Textile Art Museum Australia, as well as the Central Museum of Textiles, Łódź, Poland. Taking her sculptural textiles into the urban environment, Lucy has been commissioned to make many large-scale public works including permanent sculptures for Lyne Park in Rose Bay, Sydney and for Queens Road in central Melbourne; along with temporary installations in prominent locations such as Canberra’s airport and Civic Square. Lucy is an interdisciplinary scholar and collaborator. Her writing has been included in Visual Spatial Thinkers, in the Routledge Research in Architecture series, 2019 and she recently presented at the Australian Institute of Geographers annual conference. In collaboration with artist Rebecca Mayo and sociologist Katherine Carroll she has developed textiles-based pedagogical tools that hold space for difficult conversations about best practice healthcare. As an educator, Lucy has over 15 years of experience in creative public programs, community projects and innovative tertiary teaching.
"Through my practice I combine sculpture and textiles to weave dynamic forms at an urban scale that query how we design, experience and value civic space. My woven sculptures respond to and intertwine with their immediate architectural environment. They are made from hardware products that usually play a utilitarian and homogenising role in our urban fabric. By using experimental warpless weaving techniques, as the sculpture grows with each loop, coil or stitch, these industrial materials transform into a new intricate and volatile urban morphology; a provocation to see the city anew.
In addition to temporary and permanent public artwork, I expand textile-based methods through participatory making, community engaged projects and interdisciplinary collaboration. Overall, my practice aims to bring multiple knowledges, perspectives, voices or hands together in tangible, complex and material dialogue within a given space and with each other. "
Online Resources:
Website: https://www.emergentknowledgepractices.com/