Melbourne based artist Kate V M Sylvester process-driven, meditative practice exposes the often-overlooked materiality of everyday garments. In Pleats of Matter, Sylvester has created an immersive installation made from deconstructed, recycled t-shirts, meticulously unthreaded by hand to reveal the mass and structure of the jersey weave. Her exhibition responds to the garment’s integrity, resulting in a form shaped by gravity, time, and environment. Drawing on Deleuze’s notion of ‘the pleats of matter and the folds of time’, where matter and time are constantly interacting and shaping one another, Sylvester’s work invites viewers to consider the cyclical, symbiotic relationship between humans and nature, and the resulting material we as humans produce. In slowing down the dissection of a simple t-shirt, Sylvester invites a renewed awareness of our impact and our interconnection with the natural world and a new perspective of our relationship with the universal elements that are continuously active in our everyday.
Kate V M Sylvester, Enter right stage, 2015, recycled cotton blend red t-shirts, installation view, Living Museum of the West. Photo Kate Robertson.