Buttons and zips art work connects New Zealand with Poland

PRESS RELEASE 12 April 2010
Buttons and zips art work connects New Zealand with Poland

Mixed media Artist Helen Schamroth will represent New Zealand at the prestigious 13th International Triennial of Tapestry in Lodz, Poland this year. Her work is in Poland in preparation for the exhibition and Schamroth will attend the opening in May, with the assistance of Creative New Zealand.

"It was wonderful to be invited to exhibit in Poland as I was born in Krakow just after the war ended," says Schamroth.

For many years Schamroth has used domestic - mainly textile - materials and processes in her art to express a range of ideas.

Her parents were Jewish Holocaust survivors, and they established a clothing factory after migrating to Melbourne in 1949. Fabric scraps and buttons were always to be found in her toy drawer, as they now are in her studio.

The title of the work in Poland, The H-Diagram, refers to a process Schamroth learnt when developing art strategies, but viewers have found many other interpretations possible.
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The work is almost two metres square. It consists of 4,500 white shirt buttons wired together and 230 small zips connected to each other, all stitched onto painted stretched canvases.

"Buttons have always had particular significance for me," says Schamroth. "When I was a very small child and we were living in post-war Europe I had few toys. So my mother taught me to sew buttons on a handkerchief. Being frugal times, she would cut the buttons off overnight in readiness for another day's sewing......"

The current work has required the same kind of patience - and a large vision.

The exhibition will run from May 10 until October 31, 2010