Image: Anna Madeleine RAUPACH Slow Violence (South Coast) (installation view) 2021, embroidery thread on emergency blanket. Courtesy of the artist.
The Slow Violence series depicts maps on emergency thermal blankets woven with embroidery thread. There are four in the series, entitled Orroral Valley, Gospers Mountain, Eastern Victoria and the South Coast of New South Wales and this is the work that will be described here. This blanket measures 2.1 metres tall by 1.2 metres wide and is attached to the wall via two steel bolts in the top left and right hand corners.
The blanket is a reflective silver. Starting from top to bottom the shape of the map moves diagonally across the surface of the blanket from the top-right-hand corner heading left and down towards the centre, before moving further down towards the bottom of the blanket. The top of the shape is a blackish brown colour fading as it travels down from light orange to a deep burnt red and brown. These warm colours of thread have been densely combined alongside one another in the embroidery to give the impression of a concentration of burnt vegetation from a bird’s eye view looking down from above.
The maps are visual representations of Australia’s 2019/2020 Black Summer bushfires in the Blue Mountains, the South Coast of NSW, Namadgi National Park, and Eastern Victoria, compiled from satellite imagery gathered from emergency service applications, the Google Earth Engine Burnt Area Map, and state and national open-source datasets of fire damage to vegetation.
The resulting shapes combine scientific data and composition to interpret extreme weather events through a materialisation of this information. Designed to retain body heat and as a potential signalling device, the use of a thermal blanket here symbolises fire as both restorative and catastrophic whilst the slow technique of stitching demonstrates a repetitive and meditative practice that simultaneously destroys and repairs.
Anna Madeleine Raupach is a multidisciplinary artist and Senior Lecturer at the Australian National University (ANU) School of Art & Design (SOA&D). Her practice spans physical and digital forms to examine how technology shapes our interpretation of the natural world. In 2024 she will undertake a Fulbright Scholarship at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts.