Kate Just, A Sign of the Times
Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide
2026
A Sign of the Times features a series of thirteen hand knitted translations I created to pay homage to potent text-based, political, public signs by other artists that still resonate in our current political and social climate. I cast in knitting, famous text-based signs by artists Jeremy Deller, David McDiarmid, Barbara Kruger, Yoko Ono, Susan O’Malley, Zoe Leonard, the Guerrilla Girls, Felix Gonzalez Torres, Jenny Holzer, Damian DinéYazhi, Alyson Provax, Robert Montgomery, and Steve Powers.
Each work was hand knitted on small 3mm needles with acrylic yarn and bears my own intimate, tactile impressions of these artworks that I love and the landscapes and spaces surrounding them.. My knitted replicas reimagine artists’ large-scale public works at a smaller scale to reflect my own devotion to craft-based labour and the political power of textile crafts.
The works offer a curated glimpse of public sign artworks that span over thirty years. Ten of the artists I paid homage to have installed their sign artworks in the United States. I was born and raised in Connecticut and lived the first twenty-one years of my life in the USA. This selected body of artworks reflects on the USA’s continuing dominating influence on global politics, the current political crisis there, and the strong influence of many pop and political artists on my own art practice.
This series continues my interest in reflecting upon social and systemic injustices, and the role artists and craft mediums can play in addressing these.