Kate Just, HOPE & SAFE
Daine Singer, Melbourne
2014
HOPE & SAFE presents the material results of two public banner projects in the UK and Melbourne responding to violence against women and current media coverage of this issue. Referencing and reviving moments in feminist history in which collective action and craftwork were deployed to enact change, HOPE & SAFE invokes a utopian reimagining of women’s safety and agency within the urban environment.
In 2013, I travelled around the UK with my KNIT HOPE Project. It involved an invitation to individuals and communities to publicly join me in knitting a night-reflective fluorescent yellow banner that spells the word HOPE in silver block letters. Later, various HOPE walks were taken in public at night with it. The HOPE Banner manifested my wish for a brighter future for women. Materially and conceptually, the banner entwines dualities public and private, individual and collective. The uniquely patterned individual pieces refer to the work of many hands, joined together to form a seamless whole. The durability of the builder’s line and the high-vis reflective material, which is worn by construction workers, police and cyclists, imbues the banner with a level of visibility and authority. The singular large scale photograph HOPE Walk (Leeds) extends these complexities, documenting a moment in which police on horseback, donning coordinated yellow and silver jackets, asked if they could join the ‘protest.’
On return from the UK in early 2014, I undertook the KNIT SAFE Project in Melbourne. It involved the communal crafting of a sister banner, a night reflective black and silver ‘blanket’ that spells SAFE. The more sombre SAFE Banner operates as a shield or soft monument constructed in the shadow of recent high profile violent deaths of women in Melbourne including Jill Meagher, Tracey Connelly and Fiona Warzywoda. The photograph SAFE Walk (Melbourne) captures a small group of banner holders quietly interacting with each other in the warm glow of a street lamp, projecting an almost fictional ideal of collective resistance to the harsh realities of the world. Also presented in the exhibition is the book HOPE SAFE, documenting the projects in their entirety and featuring an in-depth essay by art critic and historian Dr Juliette Peers.
-Kate Just