Paris Points

Tracey Clement, detail from ‘Tricolor,’ 2019, embroidery on linen, 1400 x 380mm. Made while artist in residence at the Moya Dyring/AGNSW studio at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris Nov-Dec 2019.

In French, embroidery stitches are called points. So Paris Points is a pun. These works were responses to Paris – some of the ‘points’ the city made to me, stitched in thread.

The work was made during my 2-month-long stay in Nov-Dec 2019 in the Moya Dyring Studio at the Cité Internationale des Arts, thanks to AGNSW.

Tricolor is a kind of slow news piece.

It records my observations from my studio window of emergency vehicles racing back and forth across the city on Saturday 16 November 2019, the night of the first anniversary of the yellow vest protests.

Triclour takes its cues from the Bayeaux tapestry (which I visited while in France). Like this medieval wonder, it records current affairs through a technique that takes a very long time. In this way, instead of just instantly posting a reaction online, I contemplated this event for an entire month; stitch by stitch.

The Bayeaux tapestry is actually an embroidery, around 70 metres long! It records the 1066 invasion of England by William the Conquerer

Tracey Clement, ‘Fromage en traduction (cheese in translation),’ 2019, embroidery on linen, 270 x 260 mm. Made while artist in residence at the Moya Dyring/AGNSW studio at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris Nov-Dec 2019.

Fromage en traduction (cheese in translation) is a cheeky meditation on how much gets ‘lost in translation’ between cultures. Despite my best efforts my rendition of this cheese changed a lot as I translated it!

Paris Points was on show to the public on 20 December 2019, atleier 8202 (bâtiment principal), The Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris.