Lifestyle & Entertainment
6 September, 2026
Old blankets tell new stories
WOOLLEN blankets once made to keep people warm have found a very different purpose in a new exhibition at Ararat Gallery TAMA. Melbourne artist Susan Wirth has spent 18 years cutting, layering and reconstructing old blankets into works of art. For her new exhibition, Sleeping, Dreaming, Waking, those familiar materials have been shaped by time spent exploring Ararat and the Wimmera Mallee – a landscape with its own deep connection to wool.
“This place has such a history around wool production,” she said.
“I wanted to spend some time around this area and use the encounters that I have with people, places and the environment – trees, birds, plants especially – and allow that to inform the making of the work.
“For me, it’s like a return of the material, in a way, to this place.”
That process included a two-week artist residency at Natimuk in November last year, where Wirth became absorbed in the surrounding landscape.
Plants, animals, rocks and old farm sheds caught her attention, with her time in the region directly informing two of the works in the exhibition.
But a visit to the Little Desert after the 2025 fires left a particularly strong impression.
There, Wirth encountered a landscape still carrying the scars of fire but already beginning to regenerate, with banksias and grass trees emerging through the burnt country.
“It was very haunting to see the landscape,” she said.
Wirth was conscious, however, that she was encountering the fire-affected landscape as an outsider.
“I’m not from here. I am a visitor,” she said.
Wirth recorded what she saw through ink drawings and watercolours, which in turn helped shape some of the textile works now hanging at TAMA.
The landscape also echoed ideas that have long run through her work.
“Renewal, transformation, destruction, construction,” she said.
Wirth trained as a sculptor and, although the works in the exhibition predominantly hang against the wall, she still sees them as sculptural.
But while the landscape and her own experiences inform what she creates, she is reluctant to tell viewers what they should find in the finished work.
“I think it’s really important to allow people to find their own meaning,” she said.
Sleeping, Dreaming, Waking continues at Ararat Gallery TAMA until February 14.
Wirth will return to the gallery for a free public conversation with Visual Arts Coordinator Katy Mitchell on Saturday, September 12 from 2pm.
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