The Cicely & Colin Rigg Contemporary Design Award
Mary-Louise Edwards

"The hand-me-downs used in ‘formally loved’ resonate with the histories of previous owners but have become reinvested with different meanings through a reworking of their shape and form. The function of the material has changed but patterns, dyes and even past stains have remained intact, as traces of former lives… An intense period of repetitive, manual activity is characteristic of my practice and usually results in a build-up of masses of units or modules of material; in this case, hundreds of tiny scrunched and starched balls of fabric."

Mary-Louise EDWARDS
born Australia 1966
‘formally loved’ (detail) (2002)
fabric offcuts, dish cloth, starch, recycled clothes
250.0 x 450.0 cm