Kate Just, PROTEST SIGNS
Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide
2022
PROTEST SIGNS are a series of intensively produced, hand-knitted pictures of protest signs mounted on canvas and wooden boards. Each picture or sign forms a knitted homage to a real image of protest collected via social media, news media, online or at real protests. This suite of knitted protest signs addresses a broad range of significant social and political issues of our time including feminism, sexual harassment and assault, reproductive freedom, LGBTQIA+ pride and discrimination, racism, sexism, transphobia, and ecological crisis. The intimate, complex translation of these hand-made signs into knitted form invites a close tactile engagement with the value of protest signs - which are usually ephemeral, dynamic, funny, made by everyday people with at hand material, and discarded after use. This body of work about the ‘signs of our times’ continues my engagement with urgent social change movements and heralds the potential we all have to change the world with our own two hands.
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.