Michele Elliot’s book, the confidantes, accompanies her photographic series of the same name. The photographs depict her late father’s handkerchiefs with remnants of dyed shrouds held in an embroidered grid. She began this project while on an artist residency at Tender Funerals Illawarra, in Port Kembla in 2017. Over its duration, Elliot invited twenty-two friends to collaborate by way of a written text about their own fathers.
A confidante is a woman with whom a secret is shared. It also refers to an 18th century sofa, designed in France, that accommodates three people for ease of intimate conversations. In Elliot’s confidantes, the three are manifest in the objects - the handkerchief, the stitching and the remnant Tender cloth – where the layers are revealed through light. They also draw in the absent father, the writer/daughter collaborators and Elliot, the maker, in a shared remembering.
the confidantes is a beautiful book that pairs text and image in relationship to abstraction, materiality, emotion and memory.
Writers:
Anne Ferran, Bianca Willoughby, Dani Young-Lynch, Gillian Warden, Helen Gyger, Helen Idle, Holly Story, Isobel Watt, Jan Idle, Jennifer Macey, Jo Darbyshire, Joanne Linsdell, Lizz Murphy, Louise Kyle, Louise Monte, Michele Elliot, Michele Theunissen, Naomi Ullmann, Priscilla Strachan, Sarah McNamara, Shohini Gupta, Tina O’Connell, Vyv Wilson
the confidantes, 2024
Soft cover
52 pages
210 x 210 mm
