Narelle Jubelin

The Stairway from 'The Crossing', 1987
petit point with found frame
29.5 x 16.5 cm
signed, dated and inscribed with title (on the reverse)

SOLD

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Provenance
First Draft Gallery, 1987
Mori Gallery, 1989
Private collection, Sydney

Exhibited
'The Crossing' - with Adrienne Gaha, First Draft Gallery, Sydney, 1987

In 1987, Narelle Jubelin and fellow-artist Adrienne Gaha held one of the most memorable exhibitions at First Draft, Sydney titled 'The Crossing'. What may have appeared simply as a group of works which studied the landscape in and around the Blue Mountains, (where Gaha lived and Jubelin visited), these images 'were informed by feminist and post-modern theory'.

'The Stairway' is a wonderfully detailed petit point embroidery of three figures walking in the Cathedral chamber of the Jenolan Caves in New South Wales. The artist remembers the work was drawn from a nineteenth century painting she saw in the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Surrounding the handwork by Jubelin is a 1920s Australiana pokerwork and stained frame she located in a Darlinghurst Antique shop.

As Wayne Tunnicliffe, Senior Curator, Contemporary Art, Art Gallery of New South Wales notes 'Her choice of a traditionally feminine and time-consuming craft to create small-scale images and her use of old, found frames carved by amateur woodworkers add a sense of vernacular history and suggest a valuing of the domestic and hobbyist over 'high art' traditions.' ('Art Gallery of New South Wales Contemporary Art Collection', 2006, p.176)

  • The Stairway from 'The Crossing'


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Narelle Jubelin was born in Sydney in 1960 and has been living and working in Madrid, Spain since 1996, producing her single thread petit-point renditions of photographs that weave connections between histories and places across cultures and periods. Jubelin's practice is grounded in research and each new work is connected to previous projects by a narrative thread.

In 1990 Jubelin presented the groundbreaking exhibition Trade Delivers People at Aperto in the Venice Biennale. The exhibition explored the histories of colonialism and economics and the ways in which local resources and populations are have been exported and exploited globally.

Jubelin has exhibited widely in Australia and internationally, with major exhibitions including the solo exhibition Vision In Motion, University of Sydney, 2012, touring to Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), Melbourne and Samstag Museum, University of South Australia, Adelaide to 2013; Sidney Nolan: Early Experiments/Narelle Jubelin: Coda, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, Australia, 2012-2013; and The Great Divide, Angela Ferreira & Narelle Jubelin, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2009. Most recently, in 2019, a major three-artist exhibition, The Housing Question - Helen Grace, Narelle Jubelin, Sherre DeLys, was held at Penrith Regional Gallery. She was also, in 1985, the co-founder of Firstdraft Gallery, Sydney.