Teelah George: Fragile Armour

Dense embroidery, delicate chainmail, and found truck curtains come together in Teelah George’s Fragile Armour in a way that both reinforces and extends the material interests that drive her practice. Embroidery is an established and important part of George’s output, represented in Fragile Armour with Wall piece, a large textile composed of thousands of hand embroidered stitches, evidence of the labour and time expended on its making, which combine to create a compellingly beautiful work. Wall piece has been exhibited, reimagined, and reconfigured since 2018, a process that furthers considerations of time’s effects on a work of art, beyond the hours consumed by its initial creation.

Similarly reimagined are a pair of works made from truck tautliner curtains, first shown in 2024 as a single work and now existing in conversation. The incidental compositions on the vinyl curtains’ surfaces are the product of years of weather and use in the logistics industry; a material history that evokes the movement of goods across large expanses of land. Both the tautliner works and Wall piece incorporate cast bronze rings, both as supports and adornments. While bronze is traditionally thought of as a material of monuments and grandeur, George uses it in a more nuanced way, drawing attention to hierarchies of value often attributed to common materials. 

Central to this presentation is Chainmail a newly produced floor work of cast wax. Providing the clearest example of the fragile armour of the project title, Chainmail forms a dialogue with the embroidery and found materials of the broader project. Industrial foundations speak to the tautliner works, the histories of chainmail link directly to embroidery practices, while the rings of the work have clear formal relationships with the bronze forms that provide armatures for much of George’s work.

Fragile Armour is presented as part of nginha: here and now, a season of commissioned works celebrating new art and ideas.

About the artist

Teelah George is based in Naarm / Melbourne, originally from Boorloo / Perth. Her work unpacks historical understandings of material relationships and the stories that they tell. Engaging with specific ideas, objects or works, George aims to subvert material and contextual hierarchies in an effort to create new potentialities. George has exhibited widely across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. Her work is held in major corporate and institutional collections including National Gallery of Australia, Museum of Contemporary Art, Monash University Museum of Art, and Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art.