Sue Morley - Textile Artist

Sue Morley is an Art Gallery Guide, a Textile Artist and the Convenor of the Inspired by Art and Volunteering project.

Details about the exhibition

Inspired by……… an exhibition by 26 volunteers at AGSA 

(Art Gallery of South Australia)

Light Square Gallery, 39 Light Square, Adelaide 

https://www.tafesa.edu.au/adelaide-college-of-the-arts/light-square-gallery

Wed 5th August - Friday 21st August 

Monday to Friday - 10.00 a.m. - 5.00 p.m. 

Official Launch:   

Jason Smith, Director, AGSA 

Thursday 13th August, 3.00 p.m. - 5.00 p.m. 

Music is original music by David Innocente 

"One Thing Led to Another"

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Welcome to Inspired by Art and Volunteering, an exhibition with me, Tanya Ingerson. We're very excited to be working on this project and a reminder to our listeners that the Inspired By Art and Volunteering exhibition will be held this year 2026 during the Sila Festival. Details are at the bottom of this podcast, so please check that out. Really exciting. Jason Smith, the director of the Art Gallery of South Australia, will be opening the exhibition on Thursday, the 13th of August, 3 o'clock to 5 o'clock. So that's very exciting. But more exciting for today's podcast is that I'm interviewing Sue Morley. Now Sue is the conveyor of the Inspired By project and a textile artist. And in this podcast or this chat that I had with Sue, well she talked about some really interesting ideas in her art practice. And well, actually, just sit back and relax and you'll hear for yourself. So I hope you enjoy this chat I had with Sue Morley. Hello Sue. I'm talking with Sue Morley today. What's your role as a volunteer at the Art Gallery of South Australia?

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Ah um well I'm a gallery guide, so that means that I take visitors to the gallery on a tour, and one of the things I love about this as guides, we get to choose which artworks we talk about. That is true. So it's just fantastic. So I'm very interested in more contemporary art, so I do tend to choose artists who either do abstract or quite modern works. And I'm also particularly interested in women's art because historically our gallery, like many, many other galleries around the world, have overlooked art made by women. So I'm keen to help in redressing that imbalance.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Wow. I think I've been on one of your a few of your tours, and yeah, they're they're amazing. Absolutely. To all our listeners, both Helen and Sue, all our guides, definitely come and go on one of their tours. How long have you been a volunteer at the gallery for?

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Um I finished my training with you in 2018. So what's that, six years, seven years? It's flown by. It's amazing. It is. Eight years already. Thank goodness.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

And what do you love about being a volunteer? You've kind of you know um said a little bit about being a guide, but being a volunteer.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Well, like Helen said, um, I'm in a very privileged position. I'm retired, and one of the things I decided to do when I retired was to learn more about art and art history. I didn't know you could volunteer as a guide at the gallery at the time, and then I saw an advertisement and applied, and it's just wonderful to be able to combine a passion that I developed like late in life, art and art history, and um also do your history and your research, and then come and talk to a bunch of people because they're coming to the art gallery because they like like art, so it's a really win-win situation.

SPEAKER_00 3:25

It is, that's a good point. It is win-win, isn't it? Um, okay, now for this exhibition, inspired by what is your art practice?

SPEAKER_01 3:34

Okay, again, totally accidentally, I went or discovered an art exhibition by the South Australian Quilters Guild. I knew nothing about quilting at the time, but they had, as well as some traditional quilts, they had a couple of amazing contemporary, colourful, abstract quilts, and I just said I want to learn how to do that. So I took myself off to a class, and I have been sewing up crazy artistic storms and pieces in my home ever since. So it's kind of like a little secret adventure I didn't know I was going to have.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

And have you found it's it's interesting, isn't it, how textiles are becoming more and more part of accepted art and in institutions like the Art Gallery of South Australia? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:28

Yeah, it's great to see. In fact, one of my favourite pieces in our gallery is Kiharu Shiyota's Absence Embodied, which is a 3D art installation. So you actually get to bloody walk through a piece of art, not just look at it. It's fabulous.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

So for our listeners, um, Sue has been very animated talking about that, so she clearly loves it. Um so for this exhibition, inspired by, what are you inspired by for what you're going to exhibit?

SPEAKER_01 5:01

Okay, so I've got two things in particular that I'm focusing on. There's a mixed media artist whose name is Seth Abda, and in the last few years he's been designing his own fabric. So even though he's into mixed media, he's now branched out and designed some fabrics. The first time I saw them, I just had to buy quite a lot, which is what you do when you're a textile artist, you find fabric that you like. So I've got a couple of pieces using his particular fabric designs. And the other thing I'm particularly interested in at the moment is something called improvisational piecing. Ooh, what is that? So when you learn to quilt, many of you may know that you have a block which is a section in a quilt, and you often repeat that. And so the repetition makes up the design in your quilt. So it means sometimes it can be a little tedious, not always, but a little tedious because you might have to make 100 or 150 blocks of a particular shape or pattern. When you do your improvisational piecing, you do what the hell you like. So you can repeat things if you want, or you just make it up as you go along, or you can have curves and lines, and there's no rules, and that's what I love. So I've got an improvisational piece that I've just recently finished, and a couple of pieces with Seth Aptor's fabrics for this exhibition.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

That sounds amazing. Can't wait to see that. And the last question is what do you love about art?

SPEAKER_01 6:43

Um, I think it's the fact that you can have amazingly different reactions. You can respond to the colours, you can respond to the imagery, you can learn about the backstory of the artist. There's so many things you can respond to, and you and I might have completely different reactions. You might love something, and I'm going, Oh God, what do you see in that? You know, that's the beauty of it. We're all going to look through a piece of art, through our own kind of take on the world. So it makes for some really fantastic conversations about do you like this? Do you think this is good? And sometimes you agree, and sometimes you have to agree to disagree.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

Wow, well, thank you, Sue. And we can't wait to see your work in this exhibition. And I don't know, I think I'd like to come again on one of your tours. Anytime. I hope you enjoyed that conversation I had with Sue Morley. How interesting is textile art and that whole idea of improvisational piecing. I I can't wait to see what Sue comes up with for this exhibition. For people who know me that are listening to this podcast, is that I'm very passionate about historical art, European art from the 15th and 17th century, and I've enjoyed my friendship with Sue so much. She's taught me so much about contemporary art and textile art, and and I have a great enthusiasm for that style of art as well now, which is great. And just a reminder: details of the exhibition during Sala this year is in the bottom of this podcast in the details, so please check that out. And please join me next time when I interview another artist that will be exhibiting in this exhibition. And until then, bye for now.