Birrego-based artist Sarah McEwan features in the Western Riverina Arts office windows this October with an installation of red shoes, text and textiles.
McEwan is a core member of The CAD Factory, which began as an underground warehouse space in Sydney during 2005 and relocated to the remote location of Birrego in August 2010. Since then The CAD Factory have developed a variety of artistic projects in the region.
The window gallery installation explores how gender is perceived and influences perception. The objects of shoes, fabric and thread ground the text on the windows in feminist discourse and create an interplay between how one is seen as opposed to how one feels.
"I was influenced by Julie Briggs' poem about red shoes in the Art Misadventure #3 exhibition at The Roxy Gallery earlier this year," said Sarah McEwan. "She was re-interpreting a Hans Christian Andersen story with the image of a woman who can only walk faster and faster trapped in her shoes.
"The red threads in the work that are dangling down suggests ideas dropping, like thoughts manifesting into reality, and is something I've been developing for a while," continues McEwan. "It emphasises the space in-between."
This thread continues in her work for the Reimagining The Murrumbidgee exhibition that opens at The Roxy in December.
The high heel shoes in Western Riverina Arts’ window gallery were purposefully picked for their symbolism. "It's playing with the idea of gender and the internal frustrations of how one is seen," says McEwan. "What really is your authentic self?"
