Food For Thoughts: A Question of Intergenerational Memory?, 2021
kiln formed glass
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About the Artist
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Transcription
Hello, my name is Emily Greenwood, and my work is called “Food For Thoughts: A Question of Intergenerational Memory?”
The inception point for this project was during the Sydney Covid-19 Lockdown of 2021. I was spending a lot of time in this really depressive cycle of not maintaining housework. So, the inspiration came when I realised almost every meal, I had eaten over a week was eaten off paper towel napkins. Instead of on plates, because I didn’t want to do dishes.
I began thinking of cotton gingham napkins and how upper-class people use cloth napkins as opposed to paper ones. I then began to think about the labour of weaving that would have gone into creating a cotton gingham napkin before the Industrial Revolution and before colonisation.
That took me to my ancestral culture, which of course is Tongan.
This expanded the project way beyond the inception point I had begun with.
The Tongan Ta’ovala is a fabric of great importance and is considered a sacred material. The process of Ta’ovala starts with the forming of the weaving fibres, created from natural materials. The importance of the Ta’ovala is derived from this specific process, as the connection to land generates the Ta’ovala’s sacred status.
Once we came out of lockdown, I spent weeks in the hot and warm glass studios. I was pulling canes from molten glass in the hot glass studio and, slumping and weaving glass in the warm glass studio. I spent about 6 weeks, 4 days a week in the studio.
Each glass ‘swatch’ is a sculptural abstraction of the traditional Tongan Ta’ovala. As I was creating the work, I started to understand the parallels with my work and the ancient practice of my ancestors. The energy it took for my ancestors to create natural fibres for weaving the Ta’ovala paralleled the energy it took me to pull canes in the hot glass studio, to then slump and fuse in the warm glass studio. The fragile materiality of the glass parallels the sacredness of the Ta’ovala. Through the creation process of this work, I have created a stronger connection to my Tongan ancestors and my culture. Translating sacred cultural practices in my work, for a post- colonial contemporary context.
Rookwood Cemetery is the almost ideal place for this work to be on display. During the creation process, the work really brought me closer to my Tongan ancestors and culture. Which I have been excluded from my entire life. Rookwood Cemetery is also the resting place of my Tongan grandparents who I never got to meet because they passed before I was born. It is a really nice, full circle moment for them to be able to see the work or be in resting with the work as the work also rests for people to visit. The Ta’ovala is also a fabric worn on special and sacred occasions like weddings and also at funerals.
What I would hope you would take away from this work, is the importance of culture and the importance of your personal connection to culture. While also the importance of holding onto your culture even if it has been lost throughout the journey of life. I think the work also speaks to that. The intergenerational learning and memory of culture and how important it is to acknowledge your ancestors and acknowledge ancestral cultural practices.