Address given by Judy Nolan, President of ATASDA, at the opening of Inspired by May at the North Sydney Heritage Centre 14 February 2008.

This exhibition, Inspired by May, is a collaboration between The Heritage Centre, Stanton Library, May Gibbs Nutcote and the Australian Textile Arts & Surface Design Association - ATASDA.

I thank all of those who have worked to bring this exhibition together.

Ian Hoskins, the North Sydney Council historian. Stewart Reed of Nutcote, who made the initial approach to ATASDA, and Susan Shaw from Historical Services Stanton Library, who together curated the exhibition.

I thank the volunteers at Nutcote. ATASDA members were encouraged to visit there, although both our picnic days were washed out. Personally my experience of the house and gardens was greatly enhanced by the impressive volunteers, their knowledge, enthusiasm and welcome.

I thank Kirry Toose and Desdemona Foster of ATASDA who did a tremendous job writing the exhibition brief, encouraging members, collecting works, assisting in hanging and so many details in between.

Finally I'd like to thank the artists of ATASDA, who accepted the challenge to be Inspired by May and who produced such an exciting array of textile and fibre works.

ATASDA has been an active association encouraging textile and fibre artists for over 30 years. We were founded in Sydney in 1974 as the Batik Association and since that time have grown and developed to embrace all textile arts and surface design practices. We have Queensland and NSW Branches, and around 500 members across Australia. Over 50 of those artists are represented in this exhibition. Entries have come from Katherine in the Northern Territory, Gympie in Queensland, Lindisfarne in Tasmania, and many from NSW and in particular from Sydney where May Gibbs spent much of her life.

This exhibition provides a wonderful window to the diversity of modern textile and fibre arts practice. It includes wall hangings, books, wearable art, sculptures and vessels. They were created using a dizzying array of techniques, both traditional handcrafts that would have been familiar to May Gibbs plus a lot more. I had a little preview of the exhibition and catalogue and found handstitching with a wide variety of stitches, machine embroidery including free-motion and bobbin work, appliqué, piecing, and quilting, both needle and wet felting, wrapping, knotting, weaving and basketry, painting, glueing, stencilling, burning, cutting, dyeing, lino prints and mono-printing, digitised images and sun dyeing, beading, knitting, crochet, and scrumbling, trapping of materials, book binding - and that's not the complete list!

A huge range of techniques - used on just as wide a variety of materials. Natural fabrics, threads and fibres such as silks, cottons, linens and wool are used; plus man-made polyesters and acrylics. You will see wire and rubber cord, paper and foil, clay and teabags. Artists included found objects, and materials from the environment such as eucalyptus leaves, gumnuts, bark and twigs.

All of these skills, all of these materials, were put to use to create works Inspired by May. Our members were encouraged to explore and to respond to the life and work of May Gibbs - her books and illustrations, her home, Nutcote and its gardens, her love of nature and concerns for conservation, the person of her time.

It's fascinating to look at the works here and to read the artists' statements - to see the diverse ways our members approached and met this challenge. Some members have wonderful, cozy childhood memories of May's books and characters, some have focused on Nutcote and the architecture of BJ Waterhouse. Others who came to Australia after childhood recalled their early experiences here, finding the environment quite overwhelming, its beauty at first elusive. Many of the artists have taken the opportunity, have been reminded to take the time, to examine in-depth the environment around them, to see the colours of the Australian bush, the fascinating forms of the flora and fauna.

I invite you all to enjoy this wonderful array of textile and fibre works, to join our member artists in being Inspired by May.