


Transformation
an exhibition at CraftACT (an event in Design Canberra 2021), including Byzantium, an embroidery by Ruth Hingston
4 November–14 December 2021

c/o Craft ACT
an exhibition at CraftACT (an event in the 7th edition of Design Canberra), including Zooming Mindfully, a digital animation by Tim Brook and Ruth Hingston based on embroidery by 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.
29 October–12 December 2020

Feet on the Ground
an exhibition of new work by Lucile Carson and Ruth Hingston at M16, including embroidery and drawing by Ruth Hingston
18 October–4 November 2018

PlaceMakers
The annual CraftACT Accredited Professional Members exhibition at the CraftACT gallery, 180 London Circuit, Canberra, including Arriving Soon? an embroidery by Ruth Hingston
6 September–20 October 2018

Embassy workshop
Embroiderers from every region of Serbia gathered at the Australian Embassy in Belgrade to share skills and workshop new processes. Participants also displayed some of their earlier work, including the embroidery from Ruth Hingston’s Gudgenby residency
on Tuesday 15 May 2018

Govoriti jezikom šivenja
A retrospective exhibition of embroidery by Ruth Hingston at Galerija 42°, Cetinje, Montenegro
27 April–11 May 2018

Trenuci bez naslova
A screening at Galerija 42°, Cetinje, Montenegro, of a digital animation by Tim Brook, Ruth Hingston and Alistair Riddell
on Friday 27 April 2018

The Erotic Cloth
launch of a Bloomsbury Academic book edited by Alice Kettle and Lesley Millar, including the chapter, An Embroiderer’s Jouissance, by Ruth Hingston
10 February at Midland Arts Centre, Birmingham
14 February at Manchester Metropolitan University
23 February at Art Workers Guild, London
10, 14 and 23 February 2018

Shine Dome
An exhibition at EastSpace of work by Canberra designers, including Unscientific but Cosy by Ruth Hingston
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
.
12–25 November 2017

Lucence
Screenings of a series of works by staff and graduates of the ANU School of Art, including Untitled Moments a digital animation by Tim Brook, Ruth Hingston and Alistair Riddell
on Friday 21 April 2017

Namadgi Residency 10th Anniversary
A CraftACT exhibition celebrating ten years of the Namadgi Artist-in-Residence program, including Frosty Morning, Hospital Creek, an embroidered orihon by Ruth Hingston
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.Kerry-Anne Cousins
Canberra Times 24 April 2017
6 April–13 May 2017

Citizens of Craft
The CraftACT 2016 Accredited Professional Members’ exhibition, including Ruth Hingston’s embroidery The Rise
9 September–22 October 2016

Connect with your nature—background research
An exhibition of work in progress by Ruth Hingston at the National Archives
8 April–14 May 2016

Connect with your nature
An exhibition of work by Ruth Hingston at the CraftACT Gallery after a residency at the National Archives and at Gudgenby Ready-Cut Cottage
7 April–14 May 2016

discover, define, develop, deliver
The CraftACT 2015 Accredited Professional Members’ exhibition, including Ruth Hingston’s embroidery Land 4 sale @ farm gate
5 November–19 December 2015

Awaken
the annual Accredited Professional Members’ exhibition at CraftACT: Craft and Design Centre, including Breakfast with Australorps by Ruth Hingston
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.
11 September–25 October 2014

The Third Wave
This exhibition celebrates 20 years of the Hill End Artists in Residence Program. It is curated by Sarah Gurich. The works are drawn entirely from Bathurst Regional Art Gallery’s permanent collection, including photography by Tim Brook and sculpture by Ruth Hingston.
1 August–28 September 2014

The Sketchbook Project: Australia
A travelling exhibition of sketchbooks from the Brooklyn Art Library in New York, USA, including Treetop Flat, Down Your Street and Threads and Surfaces, three sketchbooks by Ruth Hingston
1–9 November 2013 (closed Monday)

Shaping Canberra
An exhibition at the ANU School of Art Gallery, Ellery Crescent, Acton ACT, curated by Ruth Hingston for the centenary of Canberra
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.
18 September–19 October 2013

Static Display
Objects from the Canberra Fire Museum, including a collection of prints and reproductions assembled by Tim Brook and Ruth Hingston
Saturday 15 June 2013

Inhabit: Living in Design
The 2013 Accredited Professional Members exhibition at CraftACT, Canberra City ACT, including Cold Climate Citrus a mixed media work by Ruth Hingston
Meyer lemons are smaller trees and make good tub specimens. They mature in late autumn and if picked and stored well, will provide lemons for many months.” The Canberra Gardener
23 May–22 June 2013

A Landmark & A Mission
Selected work from The Sketchbook Project, curated by The Art House Co-op, touring in a caravan through Pittsburg, Ann Arbor and Cleveland USA, including Treetop Flats, a sketchbook by Ruth Hingston
16 November–18 November 2012

Observations
An exhibition of photomedia work by Tim Brook, curated by Ruth Hingston, in The Photography Room, upstairs at The Artists Shed, 14 Foster Street, Queanbeyan NSW.
3 August to 2 September 2012

Signature
The 2012 Accredited Professional Members exhibition at CraftACT, Canberra City ACT, including The New Playground an embroidery by Ruth Hingston
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.
19 July–25 August 2012

Untitled Moments
A screening at PhotoAccess, Manuka ACT, of a digital animation by Tim Brook, Ruth Hingston and Alistair Riddell
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.
5–29 April 2012

Material World
An exhibition curated by Martine Peters and Narelle Phillips at ANCA, Dickson ACT, including Cold Wash, Line Dry a site-specific installation by Ruth Hingston
This is an exhibition of works that explore environmentalism through the use of recycled and found materials.
28 March–8 April 2012

Uncontained
The Accredited Professional Members exhibition, curated by Diana Hare at CraftACT, Canberra City ACT, including Growing Canberra: day and night, an embroidery by Ruth Hingston
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
20 May–18 June 2011

Embracing Innovation
An exhibition at CraftACT, Canberra City ACT, including Untitled Moments, a digital animation by Tim Brook, Ruth Hingston and Alistair Riddell
31 March–7 May 2011

The Sketchbook Project
A travelling exhibition of sketchbooks curated by the Brooklyn Art Library, New York USA, including Down Your Street, an 82-page sketchbook by Ruth Hingston featuring life in a Canberra Street
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
19 February–31 July 2011

Vessel
The Accredited Professional Members exhibition, curated by Jas Hugonnet, including Knitting a nest, a vessel contructed from recycled yarns by Ruth Hingston
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.
8 April–22 May 2010

Unravel
The Accredited Professional Members exhibition, curated by Patsy Hely, including Unravelling Country, an installation by Ruth Hingston
Ruth Hingston darns and embroiders an old worn jumper seeing it as metaphoric ofdarning 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
11 September–17 October 2009

Enduring Intimacy
Dance theatre at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra ACT, including projected videos by Tim Brook and,in the set, oversized embroidered dresses by Ruth Hingston
24–25 November 2008

Shot
A group exhibition at ANCA, Dickson ACT as part of Vivid, the national photography festival, including Shot 1 Knit 1, a soft sculpture by Ruth Hingston
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.
24 September–5 October 2008

Nije Crna
An exhibition at PhotoAccess, Griffith ACT as part of Vivid, the national photography festival, including an installation by Ruth Hingston and Tim Brook with Lea Collins
14 June–17 July 2008

Рад у Току
An installation at the Academy of Fine Art, Cetinje, Montenegro
1 November 2007

Traces d’un Passage
An exhibition at «la Genette», 30440 St Roman de Codière, France
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.
on Saturday 21 October 2006

Touch-Finish
A group exhibition at ANCA, Dickson ACT, including Please do not touch, a drawing in two sections by Ruth Hingston
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
10 May–21 May 2006

Alphabet
A group exhibition at Rarified, Dickson ACT, including Eye Spy, a series of mixed media works by Ruth Hingston
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.
3 March–23 March 2005

Body Parts
A group exhibition at ANCA, Dickson ACT, including A Payre of Bodies, a 3-D mixed media work by Ruth Hingston
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.
28 April–9 May 2004

Second Childhood
An exhibition curated by ODAM Illustrators at the Watson Arts Centre ACT, including The White Rabbit sends in a little Bill, a mixed media illustration by Ruth Hingston
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
2003

Warped Walls
An exhibition of mixed media constructions at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery
1 August–14 September 2003

On the Line
An exhibition of works in miscellaneous media at The Booking Office Gallery, Bungendore NSW, including photographs by Tim Brook and mixed media works by Ruth Hingston
27 May–15 July 2001

Re~emerging
A group exhibition at ANCA, Dickson ACT, including Dress Patterns, a mixed media work 1400 × 700 mm by Ruth Hingston
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.