Ruth Hingston

The Coronavirus pandemic has introduced new ways to retain our connections with each other while we maintain physical distance. Now our social interactions are mediated by the screen. Zoom has become a popular digital platform to keep in touch, to foster our care for one another and maintain our mental health.

My regular Mindfulness meditation group’s practice has been transformed by Zoom this year. Usually we travel to a physical space together at a specific time. Now we Zoom in together from around the country from different time zones. Sometimes it seems absurd that we sit in front of our screens in our separate homes, quietly isolating and logging on to Zoom, so that, as a group, we can close our eyes to meditate mindfully together.

One of our practices is to apply our mindfulness focus on an absorbing activity we enjoy, such as knitting, drawing or sewing. Although we are mostly silent in the presence of others, it seems we are all pleased to see each other, smiling and waving as we arrive and depart. I look forward to Zooming in again next week.

Shine Dome is a Design Canberra exhibition at Eastspace, 44 Queen Elizabeth Terrace, Parkes ACT. It is inspired by the spirit of Modernism—a celebration of the creativity and experimentation for which Canberra’s mid-century architecture is acclaimed. Contemporary designers were invited to re-interpret Roy Grounds’ iconic Academy of Science Shine Dome, which is affectionately know in Canberra as The Martian Embassy.

Ruth Hingston never fails to surprise with her inventive use of embroidery. Although in miniature, her very small seven-panelled embroidered screen narrates a vision of a monumental landscape that unfolds in all its delicate and detailed complexity, It is a reminder perhaps of the Japanese aesthetic of suggesting the majesty of nature through a miniature landscape in rocks and sand.

Awaken to the rooster crowing and hens clucking as they lay a new egg for the day. Then enjoy a fresh egg with a cup of tea for breakfast.

Australorps are a poultry bird, bred (designed) in Australia. They inherit their distinctive black plumage from black Orpington poultry stock imported from England. Australorps have an excellent laying record. They mature early and will continue to lay through winter. They are a good hen for domestic chook pens, being docile, hardy and easily handled. Australorp hens are excellent mothers to their chicks.

Chicks have paler undersides when hatched that turn black as their feathers develop. Eggs are usually a pale brown.

This demonstrates the variety and inventiveness of professional artists who live and work in Canberra. It includes works in a wide range of media, from embroidery to digital animation. Each work in the exhibition draws on material from a local collection of cultural material. Each celebrates an aspect of the lives and experiences of the real Canberrans, the people who have worked, raised families, played sport, made art and created communities.

The signature of Ruth Hingston’s work can be found in her observations about the intricate relationship of people with the landscape. She uses drawing, mixed media and embroidery to reflect upon the perceptions of people in their daily interactions with their immediate environment. These interactions are unintentionally revealed in the patterns and textures created in the interior and exterior spaces of their domestic settlements.

Currently Ruth is exploring Canberra’s emerging northern suburbs as they edge towards the ACT–NSW border. The New Playground is her whimsical response to the transformations she has observed: once sheep grazed in paddocks; then raw suburbs spread across the hillsides; now, slowly, a wonderful playground brings new life to the place.

Slow, quirky and very Canberra, Untitled Moments is a digital animation based on embroidery.

Untitled Moments is a collaborative project exploring the visual impact of embroidery and photography in a digital animation. We’ve used digital technologies to combine images and sound to create narrative fragments—imagined incidents drawn from our observations of Canberra’s most unremarkable moments.

The resulting work does not attempt to mimic cartoons or conventional animations. It’s a pastiche, an idiosyncratic mixture of embroidery, drawing, watercolour, photography, scanography, digital animation, field recordings and digitally generated sounds. The final effect is sometimes contemplative, sometimes deliberately cheesy.

This is an exhibition of works that explore environmentalism through the use of recycled and found materials.

Collaborative | conceptual | eclectic | imaginative | whimsical

These five words sum up my practice, a practice embracing art, design and illustration, a practice that continues to grow and extend with each new idea, direction and creative endeavour. It is building an eclectic body of work—objects, installations, drawings, animations, costumes, illustrations, or whatever does the job.

My aim is to produce work that connects people with an idea and offers them a space in which to reflect on their own experience.

Collaborations bring new adventures. They allow artists to share perspectives, explore ideas, build concepts and generate innovative works. Stretching my imagination like this produces work that speaks on both an aesthetic and a conceptual level—always with a touch of whimsy.

Ruth Hingston

The Sketchbook Project toured extensively throughout the USA. According to the Brooklyn Art Library It’s like a concert tour but with sketchbooks.

The sketchbooks have been catalogued and digitised by the Brooklyn Art Library for their permanent collection. They are available online at arthousecoop.com/library

One sunny winter afternoon while knitting in the garden, a Wattle bird hopped down from the Banksia tree for a closer inspection. It looked curiously at me and then the ball of wool, then disappeared around the corner of the house. I thought no more of it and went inside to make a cup of tea.

As I glanced out the kitchen window I noticed that the Wattle bird was gently pecking at the ball of wool. When I returned, the wool was unravelling into the shrubbery.

I followed the yarn around the trunk of the Banksia tree, through the rosemary bush, over the garlic chives, past the lemon tree and then swinging up into the hakea trees on the side fence. Peering up into the tree branches I saw the Wattle bird building a nest. I returned to my chair and snipped off the yarn.

Months later when the birds had abandoned their nest, I climbed up to see what had happened to the woollen yarn. The nest was a messy assortment of twigs and sticks held together with dried grasses, my woollen yarn and matted hair from a neighbour’s white Samoyed dog.

Ruth Hingston darns and embroiders an old worn jumper seeing it as metaphoric of darning and mending the land. But the jumper is not remade in its original form—not returned to its natural state—a reminder perhaps that sitting lightly on the land in the first place might be the only answer to current ecological dilemmas.

Patsy Hely
curator

Photographing places far from home

The camera allows me that quick small grab at an unfamiliar or exotic detail that I know I can’t easily return to explore in a more considered drawing. A quick shot as I try to capture and grasp hold of these enticing glimpses triggers the mind’s desire to return later and gaze upon a new unfolding idea.

A window slit is not a familiar architectural feature in Australian dwellings, nor are patterned walls of hand built stonework. These tiny narrow windows are found in rural stone buildings tucked into a French rural landscape layered with centuries of conflicts.

Inside, the narrow window opens out to create a wide angular cavity in the thick stone wall. The windows are designed for defence. Wide enough to shoot an arrow out, but not easily breached from outside. The wide angular internal sill allows the archer room to manoeuvre and line up a clear shot of an intruder.

The wool and the knitting would come home with me. I would continue to knit my delight in the textural patterns of stonework and narrow windows. I would shoot needles into the wool to create a wrapping to protect a body from the Canberra cold. And the photograph remains as my true souvenir (memory) of the original moment of discovery.

The photograph shot an arrow through my knitting. Shot 1 Knit 1.

Drawings from the Cévennes

These drawings are selected from work undertaken during two months in 2006, while the artist was living in the Cévennes, a mountainous region of the Languedoc-Roussillon province in the south of France.

Ruth was inspired by the wooden doors, narrow steps and tiny windows of the traditional stone buildings unique to this region.

She draws with a metre-long stick dipped in ink.

Please do not touch by Ruth Hingston is a work of poignancy and mystery. I wanted to rescue and examine this apparently lost garment and to reconstruct a story around it. I was left wondering who had owned and abandoned a garment so lovingly crafted.

Robert Bell,
judge, 2007 Calleen Acquisition Award

Children have traditionally been kept amused during long journeys by playing Eye Spy while looking out the windows. Each turn of the game begins with one child reciting the lines I spy with my little eye, something beginning with… followed (after a suitably dramatic pause) by the first letter of something they have noticed.

It is fun noticing unusual things but often the trick is to notice something so ordinary that the other players overlook it.

This work is based on the pattern pieces for an Elizabethan corset. It is constructed from cardboard, paper and calico. The surface of the corset is embroidered, quilted and painted in a monochromatic palette indicative of traditional corsetry. The corset is trimmed with pearls and small bows to encourage the viewer to consider the historical references and perceptions of feminine qualities associated with this garment.

Oh! So Bill’s got to come down the chimney, has he? said Alice to herself. Why, they seem to put everything upon Bill! I wouldn’t be in Bill’s place for a good deal: this fire-place is narrow, to be sure; but I think, I can kick a little!

She drew her foot as far down the chimney as she could, and waited till she heard a little animal (she couldn’t guess of what sort it was) scratching and scrambling about in the chimney close above her: then, saying to herself, This is Bill, she gave one sharp kick, and waited to see what would happen next.

The first thing she heard was a general chorus of, There goes Bill! then the Rabbit’s voice alone—Catch him, you by the hedge! then silence, and then another confusion of voices—Hold up his head.—Brandy now.—Don’t choke him.—How was it, old fellow? What happened to you? Tell us all about it!

Lewis Carroll 1865
Alice in Wonderland Chapter IV

I am astonished by the experience that the human condition will encounter, resist, endure, survive then emerge with a sense of celebration. While considering the brevity of life, I have reflected on the seemingly small details that give the greatest sense of intimacy and joy.