Craft Australia     Advocacy·Communication·Research

• Home
• About us
• Newsroom

• Research Centre
• Library
• Calendars

• Image Bank
• Living Treasures
• National Forums

• Networks
• Subscribe
• Connect

• Donate
• Contact us

Library

Other Reviews

Big sister, little sister

The dynamic Chicks on Speed

Event   Viva La Craft

Chicks on Speed have recently participated in Craft Victoria's Viva La Craft project weaving in collaboration with the Victorian Tapestry Workshop a giant "big sister eye" stage back drop interwoven with copper threads that will allow the tapestry to also function as a musical instrument.

For those who don't know, Chicks on Speed are a trio of thirty-something women who met at art school in Munich in the early 1990s. The three girls sport cultural baggage from three different countries - one hails from Germany, one from Australia and the third from the USA. Together Kiki Moorse, Alex Murray-Leslie and Melissa Logan have been responsible for over ten years of weird and wonderful collaborative creativity. Their avant-garde oeuvre covers a huge range of media - from painting, film and photography to music, fashion and sundry other forms of political iconoclasm.ⁱ These ladies basically like to have fun, yet the work they generate is pulled along by a strong undercurrent of social conscience. Much of its heart is drawn from earlier feminist art and the egalitarian pleas of the social democracy movement.

As artists, the Chicks give the impression of being willing to take almost anything on, so long as it leads to a creative outcome. They appear to be less earnest than other collectives of provocative femmes such as the US Guerilla Girls: their projects play with the dominant capitalist patriarchy like a cat plays with a ball, tickling it rather than trying to make it fall apart.

Craft has always played an important role in the Chicks' work, most overtly in their self-styled fashion wardrobes. Their anarchistic musical performances are renowned as much for the roughly sewn hand-made costumes they wear on stage as for the raw-edged retro nuances of their sound. Like everything they do, their handiwork is always laced with irony and self-sabotage. One of the Chick's earliest manifestations was as the creative co-owners of a bar in Munich. Seppi played host to hothouse creative happenings, often of a transient nature and usually involving skilled improvisation. There is a sense of this 'serve it up' aesthetic in their current work in progress; large collaborative tapestry with Melbourne's Victorian Tapestry Workshop. The piece is being woven onsite in the gallery space of Craft Victoria, surrounded by a mélange of the Chicks' earlier work, including music video and walls draped with costumes and other crafty collages. Aptly titled Viva La Craft, the exhibition provides an important context for the woven work as it demonstrates the full span of the Chicks' prolific output. It also pulls the medium of tapestry - a craft most readily associated with ancient history - into the present and shows off the contemporary dexterity of the workshop weavers.

But wait there's more! As if it were not enough to make a visual image alone, the Chicks have asked the VTW weavers if they can also engineer the piece to function as a musical instrument - specifically a theremin.ⁱⁱ For those who have not witnessed British comedian Bill Bailey's hysterical revival of this arcane instrument, it sounds a bit like the original Dr Who theme music - full of 'weee wooo' spookiness! For the Workshop weavers this presents a completely new challenge as they have to 'weave' copper wire in alongside the traditional woolen thread. The process is highly experimental and involves much close communication between the weavers involved. When finished, the giant eye will act as an enormous electronic conductor, generating a soundscape that will travel with the Chicks and be used in conjunction with their bevy of other quirky instruments.ⁱⁱⁱ

The tapestry project was initiated by the Chicks who have already worked with Craft Victoria. Suitably, collaboration is also a mainstay of the VTW's mandate and is inherent in the nature of the tapestry medium itself. As there was only a small budget allocated to this project, the basic equipment and wools needed had to be sourced inventively too. Workshop Manager Sara Lindsay donated an old loom for the task and reclaimed some weft from an art school bin. In true Chicks' style, a variety of full-on fluoro and sparkly threads were then purchased from inexpensive bulk stores. Bright pink organza is being woven into the surface to create a dynamic element to the instrument. Lindsay says the gingham thread defining the lashes of the giant eye was chosen especially for its visual equivalence to buzzing static noise. The finished tapestry will have the effect of a hovering 'big sister' - a giant eye looking out of its hypercolourful world at us, perhaps vibrating a little as it streams its robotic monotone. When complete the tapestry will be around 1.5 x 2 metres and will play a dual role as a backdrop as well as an instrument of aural provocation.

Like the VTW, the Chicks are keen to keep evolving artistically and view collaborative practice as vitally important in their creative toolbox. For the Workshop, like many cultural businesses, creative quantum shifting is also now core business. The uncertain economic environment is prompting much lateral thinking and innovative approaches to cost-sharing the creation of their projects. Although one down (Kiki recently left the group to pursue her own DJ / art career), the Chicks continue to seek out ways of keeping their practice fresh and relevant. Ever the skeptical capitalists, they are keen to subvert their own success so they don't become part of the system they like so much to elbow. ^iv

Anna Clabburn, April 2009

Anna Clabburn is a freelance writer, curator and administrator with a special interest in environmental projects. She is based in central eastern Victoria and lives with her partner, two boys and sundry other winged and legged creatures.

Footnotes

1. See website www.chicksonspeed.com
2. A theremin is an electronic instrument that is 'played' without touch, by moving the player's hands through the electrical signal emitted by the machine.
3. Among the instruments on show are a stiletto string 'violin' and a microphonic hat.
4. Apparently their recording company is designed as a 'suicide' label, destined to be 'killed off' after ten albums.

LIBREV20090505AC