Student artwork on display in Europe

Artworks by a Charles Darwin University PhD candidate have gone on display at an exhibition at the National T,textile Museum in the Netherlands. 

Aly de Groot is one of 40 artists and designers from around the world featured in the exhibition “Earth Matters”, which celebrates textile artists working on environmental themes in their practice.

Aly, who travelled to the city of Tilburg for the opening this month said the exhibition featured sculptures she’d made from driftwood and ghost nets collected by rangers on Groote Island and weaved with Indigenous women titled “Ghost Net Baskets” and the short film “A Ghost Story - The Art of Aly de Groot”.

“My father was born about half an hour from Tilburg where the museum is located, in a historical and famous village called Kinderdike,” Aly said. “I had never been to the Netherlands before I commenced my PhD research project in 2010.”

Through her PhD Aly has transformed marine debris into a body of work that looks at the use and importance of fibre art as a mechanism to respond to environmental concerns.

“I realised, after many years of working and weaving with Indigenous fibre artists in Arnhem Land and across Australia, that fibre art practice in Australia is inherently aligned with a connection to land and culture,” she said. “I travelled to the Netherlands with my dad to find out more about his heritage and to meet my relatives. This became the catalyst in laying down the foundation for my creative PhD research and exploration of my Dutch origins.”

She said that the opportunity to present some of her PhD work in the Netherlands, represented a milestone near the end of her studies, considering it was where she had discovered the missing link between her art practice and creative philosophy.

“It was a real thrill when I was invited to participate in the exhibition, not only because it was my first international exhibition, but it was on my ancestral lands as well as exploring environmental themes and textiles which is my passion,” she said.

"Earth Matters" curated by Lidewij Edelkoort and Philip Fimmano will run until November 26 at the Netherlands T,textile Museum, Tilburg.

While in Europe Aly also travelled to Paris to present a paper at the Twelfth Arts in Society Conference on her PhD research project and art practice and discuss how women around the world have formed strong social platforms through weaving baskets. She is due to complete her PhD in September.