Betty Musgrove is an artist predominantly working with textiles
Jessamy: Can you can tell me a little bit about yourself and your work?
Betty: I’m an artist (she/they) based in Melbourne who currently works predominantly with textiles. I moved to Melbourne in 2009 after visiting for a few weeks and having an amazing time connecting with a vibrant art and performance scene that felt full of possibilities. I was half way through a Fine Art bachelor’s degree in Brisbane, but during that visit I found the RMIT printmaking department and was really excited by it, so I applied and finish my undergrad there. But the main thing that underpins my practice is that I grew up in an extended family of artists. In particular, I was heavily influenced by witnessing my mother Sue work on her textile practice throughout my childhood. Sue is an amazing textile artist and imparted the skills that have given me the foundations of my practice. We’re very close, and growing up she would teach me a wide range of art and craft techniques like copper enamelling, drawing, painting, and textile techniques such as cross-stitch, long stitch, machine quilting and embroidery, appliqué and basic fabric printing and painting.
What drew you in the end to working in textiles?
Watching Sue make things with textiles always felt like watching a magic trick. She was a generous magician who was always happy to share the secrets to those tricks. I started working with textiles around the age of seven. Under her guidance I made my first quilt between the ages of eight and ten, chipping away on weekends and school holidays. I then started making dolls around the age of twelve. I loved the dimension and characters that would come out. I felt like I was getting too old to play with toys but loved them dearly – this felt like a bit of a ways to maintain that sense of play. Doll-making also turned in to a bit of a money-making project and I got a number of commissions through my high school years. Around the age of seventeen I was struck a bit by the needing-to-be-cool bug, and stepped back from doll making and textiles. On reflection I’d say in part there was some internalised misogyny at play. Textiles as an art form are less valued than mediums such as painting – unsurprising as they are a medium predominantly used by women, and I wanted to be a ‘serious artist’ (again I cringe at the obvious internalised misogyny on reflection). While studying printmaking in my mid-twenties I experimented a couple of times with digital textile printing with family photos. I was unpacking a lot of family history and trauma, and realised that I wanted to explore more of the lightness in my own family. The joy I kept coming back to was the skills that women had passed on to each other through generations; textiles are a big part of that tradition. I love the stories embedded in beloved family textile heirlooms. I love the generosity of sharing skills, the way they are shared through time together and oral history – the ritual of the demonstration. I also really missed those skills and wanted to see what would come out of revisiting them with a new perspective. It was empowering to return to textiles, to reclaim and honour this medium – to really feel how important it has been in giving me a voice and form of expression.
Every single day we engage with textiles on utilitarian, social, cultural, creative and status levels – often without realising as we take it as a given to our existence. From the minute we’re born, we’re wrapped in cloth. When we die, we are shrouded. Yet it’s still underappreciated as an artistic medium. It’s an incredible art form that should be elevated and celebrated.
It sounds like your mum is a big influence on your practice. Can you tell me a little bit about her work?
Sue’s work is incredible - highly detailed and labour intensive. Her subject matter varies from celebrating the glory of nature, to re-imagining iconic paintings, to portraits of family members. It can be very playful and she often hides little interpersonal jokes within her works. I feel very privileged to have had the space and time to develop my practice. I often wish Sue could have had the sort of time I’ve had, but she worked hard to support our family both domestically and financially through her day job. I know on many occasions she has mentioned how much she wishes she had more time to create. It’s amazing the body of work she has made considering the workloads she has had providing and caring for our family. I honestly think she’s one of this country’s best-kept secrets in terms of textile artists. Maybe I’m biased being her daughter, but anyone I know who has seen her work is blown away.
The time involved in textiles is extraordinary – I’ve always though it can be a really long process?
It certainly can be. But it’s one of the things I love. One of my dear cousins, Maggie Hensel-Brown, who is an incredible lace making artist I highly recommend having a look at, showed me a work in progress one day – a tiny area around five centimetres square and said, "That was a season of Downtown Abbey." – a measurement of time that anyone who works in these kinds of labour intensive processes will appreciate. But you do it because you get lost in it. It's like breathing. I don't think of the time when I'm embroidering as a chore, even when I’m on a deadline to finish for a show. It fills my life with such joy and takes me to another realm – it’s an escape hatch.
I also work a lot with digitally printed textiles. It’s where my two worlds of printmaking and textiles have come together. It may not take the same amount of hours that embroidery does, but you do still have to spend a long time working with the process. Stepping further into this realm has opened up a world of possibilities, mixing these faster digital processes with the more labour-intensive ones.
One of the things you’ve said recently about 2020 was that there was a ‘flattening’ of ideas for you. How have you, and your work as an artist, made it through 2020?
Over the last six years I've had a solo exhibition nearly every year. I know that might not mean much to other artists who may have multiple solo shows a year, but for me it’s a lot. I have a day job, an active social life, and really appreciate rest and not burning out. I think like many artists I’ve spent a long time equating my output to my self-worth, and I wanted to challenge that way of thinking. After my last exhibition at the end of 2019, I'd made a pact with myself to take a year off exhibiting and to digest the last few years of work. I was already on this trajectory of taking a break when 2020 and all its glory hit. It really knocked the wind out of me. I kept being asked about what I was making – that surely the upside of lockdown was all this free time to make but I had nothing left in the tank. All I could respond with was that I had 10 seasons of RuPaul to re-watch, and a bed to hide in. I just didn’t have anything meaningful to say conceptually through my practise. And that’s fine. I wasn’t going to double down on such an awful time we all just needed to get through by also piling on self-punishment for lack of output or inspiration.
I think because of that, a couple of happy little creative side adventures happened anyway. I delved more into design work. I designed myself a lush pair of tassel textile earrings just as a means of keeping my hands busy and making something nice for myself. It was such a treat to dive into a world of just playing with colour and pattern rather than focusing on concept and meaning. I ended up making lots of pairs for people and it also became a really nice way to connect with the outside world. Choosing colours with people via email and video and having lovely excited responses from people when they got their new pieces. It really helped me get through lockdown. It was a great reminder of the tactile and comforting beauty of textiles. They don’t have to be conceptually heavy to have creative value and artistic worth.
What do you see as some of the biggest issues facing women, nonbinary and gender diverse people in Victoria?
What comes to the front of my mind, particularly after the last year, is a lack of financial security and equity. From not being paid equal money for equal work, to industries predominantly worked by marginalised genders being less financially valued, to the majority of unpaid domestic work in hetero-normative relationships falling on women. It’s a double down of barriers if you also work in the arts industry as it’s so underappreciated in Australia. It’s definitely led me to feel like I’ve had to make a choice between pursuing a career in the arts and maybe having a family - one or the other. Growing up my mother supported my father’s career as a writer and academic by bearing the brunt of domestic work and raising us. His creative work was always prioritised despite them both having creative practices. I often wonder what she could have achieved in her arts career if that could have been shared more equally. Again, it’s amazing how much work she has produced considering her workload of domestic labour and a day job. Like my mother Sue has always said to me “money doesn’t buy you happiness, but it sure buys you a lot of options”.
Interview Jessamy Gleeson, Photographs Mia Mala McDonald