Tania Spencer
Lake Grace, WA
Suspended sculptural textile installations, wall works and objects knitted, embroidered or woven from fencing wires, steel, fabric or flagging tape.
MessageTania is based in Lake Grace Western Australia, has a BA(Art) from Curtin University. She has had 6 solo shows, the most recent being Transient Landscape at Artgeo Galleries in 2021. She has exhibited in Sculpture by the Sea eight times in Cottesloe and Bondi twice. In 2011 Tania received a Clitheroe Foundation Mentorship working with Brian McKay and was awarded an Artstart Grant from the Australia Council. Tania was the 2010 Alcoa Major Sculpture Award at Castaways Sculpture Awards, Rockingham. In 2009 she won the Bunbury Biennale acquisition prize. In 2008 Tania took out the Western Australian Sculptors Scholarship and the Kids Choice prizes at Sculpture by the Sea, Cottesloe.
Other national exhibitions include Love Lace, The International Lace Award at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, NSW and Sensorial Loop, the 1st Textile Triennial in Tamworth, NSW. Tania is represented by Gunyulgup Galleries.
Tania has works in the Tamworth Regional Gallery Textile Collection, City of Melville Textile Collection, Cities of Nedlands, Melville and Bunbury Art Collections, and Gomboc Gallery and Sculpture Park collection, the Janet Holmes a Court collection, Andrew and Nicola Forrest collection and numerous private collections. Tania has completed public artworks in Albany, Lake Grace, Karlgarin, Melville and the Northcliffe Sculpture Walk – Understory.
www.taniaspencer.com
Statement
Tania Spencer’s art combines the textile techniques of knit, crochet, embroidery or weaving with rural, industrial or recycled materials. Her works often take the form of large scale knitted installations from fencing wire, sculptural objects and embroideries of heavy wire stitched onto metal canvases.
Instead of threading a needle and cotton she hand bends each wire stitch. Her tools are found in the shed, not the sewing box and usually consist of bolt cutters, drills, welders, hand made jigs, pliers and a wire spinning ginny.
Growing up on a farm, in the southeastern Wheatbelt in Western Australia, her art process fuses the rural and domestic heritage. In attempting to create archival textiles the work contributes to the conversation on valuing the handmade nature of domestic textiles.
More recently her work has shifted to include softer textile interventions in the public domain. Created with brightly coloured surveyors tape, these optimistic new installations are markers on the landscape, industrial signifiers of change and places of activity.
www.taniaspencer.com.au