The Seed Stitch Collective are playing with the theme ‘Dopamine’ for this year’s Sydney Craft Week. Best known as the driving force behind the feelings of anticipation, euphoria, motivation, and desire, this potent chemical has a complicated flip-side. Through the contemporary use of textile mediums, Soraya Abidin, Suzanne Davey, Niki McDonald, Christina Newberry, Emma Peters and Kylie Walsh each bring their personal take on the Dopamine theme to generate a space radiating with energy and colour in a group show at GAFFA Gallery.

Look here! Now over there! Me, me, me! What, is that me? I am so in loooove! Our everyday digital world is awash with images passing before our eyes; they wow us, entertain, mesmerise, move, shock and distress us but we can’t stop looking. The puff and ruffle of our constructed social media identities razzles and dazzles us. The shiny, the new, the now, all captures our fleeting attention. That dopamine rush. Technology systems enter our virtual spaces, forever expanding and developing new ways to hook us to their particular message. Pfffft… asks what are we truly seeing? What are we really experiencing? Who are we connecting with? What does visibility mean in a media saturated world?

The Saga explores the dynamics and complexities of relationships from a feminine perspective using domestic textiles. The work responds to romantic struggles and failed relationship tales, accounts of sexual transgressions against women, both personal and collective. The sheet, with its physical proximity to skin and bodily experiences is utlised as an emotionally charged site where love and personal drama is experienced, in sickness and in health. Memories and histories, both good and bad, are embodied in the fabric stains, marks, surface rumples and gathers created by bodies tossing, turning, resting. The Saga employs romantic gesture; a floral bouquet and scattered petals, to mark the fabric through the application of heat. It uses the language of romantic opulence; ruffles, frills and gathers of gendered clothing, to question power and control in relationships and its role in creating feminine histories.