Rossanne Pellegrino
A Stitch in Time
Found photograph printed on cotton, vintage doilies, vintage cloth placement holders, tassel fringing.
2021
Rossanne Pellegrino is an Australian mixed media artist now based in St. Leonards-on-Sea (UK).
Rossanne has exhibited her work in the UK, Australia and Europe including at Royal Academy of Arts, Tate Modern, Royal College of Art, Hastings Museum and Gallery, Centre for Contemporary Photography (Australia) and more.
” I make work about memory, experience and identity. I began incorporating found imagery in my art practice in 2016, combining them with embroidery and collage to retell the histories of these photos or to reinvent new ones. Story telling also plays a huge part in my work and through the old photographs I have discovered, I have touched upon my own story of identity – being a female in her 40s, born in Australia to a Scottish mother and an Italian-Australian father, being an ‘80s kid’, currently living in St Leonards-on-Sea (UK) and now a mother myself.
With found imagery as my basis, I use collage to intervene and change the images’ original meaning. Materials such as textiles, embroidery, household items, children’s toys and sweets, and handmade clay replicas of found objects appear in my work.
Often with women as the subjects of my imagery, I have made commentary on my observations on the changing (or unchanging) views of women’s roles in society, tradition, motherhood and identity. I have used bold colour, pastel hues, humour and unexpected objects, such as pompoms, to look at these themes in an accessible way. My aim is to create work that is not bound by a history and tradition of how artists ‘should’ make art. I often use humour, glitter, children’s toys and pompoms in my work.
I also incorporate embroidery and sewing – largely considered ‘women’s work’ – and add domestic objects in my art to create fabric wall hangings, inspired by Suffragette banners, and to embroider old photographs. These interventions change the original meaning of the image and give its subjects new histories and imagined identities.”
