Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

‘Happier in My Lonely Cell’: Convict Women’s Textiles

‘Happier in My Lonely Cell’: Convict Women’s Textiles Abstract This article concerns the near total lack of artworks by Australia’s convict women that have come to light. First, I examine the reasons why convict women’s art was either not produced or not preserved, and then I offer a preliminary analysis of three textile artworks made by convict women in the mid-nineteenth century: the exceedingly well known Rajah Quilt (1841) and two less well known embroidery samplers from around the same time. In comparing these textiles, this article articulates the complex status of so much convict art regardless of its maker’s gender: its oscillation between a form of creative self-expression and an exercise in strict disciplinary reform and social conditioning from above. Yet, this article also shows how sexual difference inflected the life-worlds of female convicts and the textile art they produced, focusing on the gendered productive and reproductive forms of labour that were demanded of convict women in the penal colonies of Australia. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art Taylor & Francis

‘Happier in My Lonely Cell’: Convict Women’s Textiles

Hughes, Helen
Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art , Volume 22 (2): 18 – Jul 3, 2022
Download PDF

‘Happier in My Lonely Cell’: Convict Women’s Textiles

Abstract

Abstract This article concerns the near total lack of artworks by Australia’s convict women that have come to light. First, I examine the reasons why convict women’s art was either not produced or not preserved, and then I offer a preliminary analysis of three textile artworks made by convict women in the mid-nineteenth century: the exceedingly well known Rajah Quilt (1841) and two less well known embroidery samplers from around the same time. In comparing these textiles, this...
Loading next page...
 
/lp/taylor-francis/happier-in-my-lonely-cell-convict-women-s-textiles-0vh70u2lK0
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Copyright
© 2022 The Art Association of Australia and New Zealand, Inc
ISSN
2203-1871
eISSN
1443-4318
DOI
10.1080/14434318.2022.2147546
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Abstract This article concerns the near total lack of artworks by Australia’s convict women that have come to light. First, I examine the reasons why convict women’s art was either not produced or not preserved, and then I offer a preliminary analysis of three textile artworks made by convict women in the mid-nineteenth century: the exceedingly well known Rajah Quilt (1841) and two less well known embroidery samplers from around the same time. In comparing these textiles, this article articulates the complex status of so much convict art regardless of its maker’s gender: its oscillation between a form of creative self-expression and an exercise in strict disciplinary reform and social conditioning from above. Yet, this article also shows how sexual difference inflected the life-worlds of female convicts and the textile art they produced, focusing on the gendered productive and reproductive forms of labour that were demanded of convict women in the penal colonies of Australia.

Journal

Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art – Taylor & Francis

Published: Jul 3, 2022

Keywords: convict art; textiles; quilts; embroidery samplers; convict women; colonial art

There are no references for this article.