I do it and you do it too
Alaiya, Tess Rogers, Red de Rooij
30 Apr–24 May 2025
I do it and you do it too seeks to present a material, technical, conceptual, social, and synchronous inquiry into the possibilities of photography, textiles, and their intersection. It magnifies processes, properties assembly, and the perpetual transformation of understanding and value.
Tess Rogers, Alaiya, and Red de Rooij work within textile and photographic mediums, investigating historical and contemporary functions, techniques, and theory in these fields. Their practices honour lineages of intergenerational and community connection, expanding on technical knowledge and cultural heritage. They work with consideration of historical and industrial textile production, and the distribution of this labour amongst geographical, racial, gendered, and class lines. I do it and you do it too magnifies the processes, properties and assembly of the artworks, illuminating materiality within textiles and photography, and the perpetual transformation of understanding and value.
Textiles and photos act as a container for memories: at their time of production, and through subsequent visual histories recorded through use and age. Re-examining these materials, each time with new context, information, and dialogues, facilitates multi-temporal and multi-personal experiences. This cognitive process serves as an opportunity for expansion and existence beyond normative frameworks and discourses surrounding textiles and photography.
I do it and you do it too seeks to present a material, technical, conceptual, social, and synchronous inquiry into the possibilities of photography, textiles, and their intersection.
Resistance/transformation. Impermanence/resilience. Memory/potentiality.
Tess Rogers uses photography, embroidery, and text to explore how softness can be a form of freedom, and examine intersections of social reproduction and femininity.
Alaiya employs photography, screen printing, sewing, and performance as avenues for self-articulation.
Red de Rooij traverses textiles, photography and found objects, delving into the interplay between material and digital cultures through the lens of preservation and self-positioning.
I do it and you do it too seeks to present a material, technical, conceptual, social, and synchronous inquiry into the possibilities of photography, textiles, and their intersection. It magnifies processes, properties assembly, and the perpetual transformation of understanding and value.
This program takes place on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We recognise that sovereignty was never ceded - this land is stolen land. We pay respects to Wurundjeri Elders, past, present and emerging, to the Elders from other communities and to any other Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders who might encounter or participate in the program.
Alaiya employs photography, screen printing, sewing, and performance as avenues for self-articulation.
Tess Rogers is an artist whose practice, which drips with nostalgia, lucent bodies, and clouded hope, explores how softness can serve as a form of freedom. Spanning analogue photography, embroidery, text and video, Rogers examines the intersections of social reproduction and femininity, as well as the ways that fabric can evoke memories and hold familial fragments. She is intrigued by the complexities of what is soft and sweet. While these concepts and feelings are often associated with ‘traditional’ femininity and can be limiting when viewed in that context, they can also act as vehicles for dismantling patriarchy. In Rogers' work, textiles serve as tools for probing these ideas, allowing her to create tactile and tangible representations of these feelings.
Red de Rooij works within rituals of tactility, repurposing and preserving photographs, patterns, fibres and discarded materials to examine the ebbs and flows of value. Rooij's work navigates realms of community and identity, as well as the cyclical rhythms of our surroundings and histories. Through this exploration, Rooij reimagines our experience of self and environment, in synchronicity with an investigation into contemporary material and digital cultures.