Norma Slabbert, Hamilton, New Zealand

Website: www.normaslabbert.com
E-mail: normaslabbert@xtra.co.nz 

I am a quiltmaker and writer from New Zealand.  Quiltmaking is a way of life for me; a way to contemplate, question, and communicate basic truths about life and human nature – especially in times of difficulty and disaster.  As a migrant, my work often comments on coming and going, place and displacement, and the space in between. Please visit my website for a more comprehensive quilt biography.

Welcome #1

Retail Price: NFS
Dimensions: 111 x 64 cm (H x W)
Statement: Leaving home is a journey without end. Immigrants often find themselves unwelcome and spiritually homeless when they discover the place they have journeyed to is not theirs, and the one they have left can not be recovered.
Exhibitions: Contemporary New Zealand Quilts, Pataka Museum, Wellington
Photographer: Norma Slabbert

Welcome #4

Retail Price: NFS
Dimensions: 200 x 105 cm (H x W)
Statement: Leaving home is a journey without end. Immigrants often find themselves unwelcome and spiritually homeless when they discover the place they have journeyed to is not theirs, and the one they have left can not be recovered.
Exhibitions: Quilt Auckland National Symposium
Photographer: Norma Slabbert

Displaced

Retail Price: NFS
Dimensions: 170 x 87.5 cm (H x W)
Statement: Made in response to, “Have you made a New Zealand quilt yet?” A dilemma. Do I use primary colours to perpetuate a postcard Godzone, or do I explore New Zealand’s dark underbelly. I opted for the half-square triangle – a universal symbol that threads across Pacific and African borders.
Exhibitions: 15th European Patchwork Meeting, Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, France
Photographer: Norma Slabbert

I Thought I Saw Angels in the Gully

Retail Price: NFS
Dimensions: 240 x 113cm(H x W)
Statement: The quilt refers to establishing a new home and garden; the solitude and silence in our gully, restoring it with natives, and the profusion of ferns and fronds that shelter birds and other beings. Inspired by horizontal narrative bands in ancient frieze designs, African carved doors, and Pacific tapa cloths.
Exhibitions: 15th European Patchwork Meeting, Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, France
Photographer: Norma Slabbert

© Norma Slabbert