In July 2025 we were delighted to have the article about Karen Rubado’s practice published in the Garland Magazine. Here is a little insight into Garland. I would strongly recommend it to anyone who would like to fill their minds with stories of creativity and beauty.
Garland was launched in 2015 as a partner of the World Crafts Council – Australia, a national entity of the World Crafts Council – Asia Pacific.
Garland is based in Australia, which, as a Western nation in the Eastern hemisphere, offers a space to connect different cultures. As home to the oldest living cultures, Australians are increasingly influenced by the deep values of respect for Country that are practiced by its First Nations. This encourages respect for other cultures. Many Australians visit and work in creative centres in the region, where they collaborate with local workshops to produce works of enduring beauty. Others remain in Australia to make something of their work, whether it is the verdant lotus ponds of Arnhem Land, flotsam washed up on the wild southern beaches or the street culture of an inner suburb. Australia has its problems, but there are many who strive to help make the country play a positive role in the world, as you can tell from the stories they share here.
But Australia is just one of the more than 89 countries where our writers are based. We offer Garland as a space for the region as a whole to connect.
Craft offers a lingua franca between cultures. It sits outside the developmental narrative, which is mostly about catching up with the West. There is much to learn about the value of the object in different cultures as a way of sustaining meaning across time and space. Embedded in the object is the deep time necessary to master techniques for giving expression to the language of materials. As the object travels from the workshop to the gallery and home, it nurtures the source of this creativity with the respect and honour that sustains it.
Below is the link to the article about Karen – right click to open it. Enjoy.
Solo Exhibition – unraveling certainties
18th July – 26th August 2024.
Karen’s initial interest in weaving and manipulating the woven form was triggered by observing traditional Thai weavers. This began the learning journey into the maze that is the world of looms and their workings. Since her Masters graduating exhibition from Elam in 2018 Karen has been investigating how to juxtapose the constraints of mechanical weaving against the chance, chaos and coincidence that comes from pushing the boundaries, bending the rules, asking ‘what if?’
In this current series of works ‘unraveling certainties’ Karen continues her exploratory practice of doing and undoing but in this iteration she then adds a redoing of the same but different. In much of her earlier work Karen broke down found materials and wove them into structures of various levels of organic integrity with spaces and materiality overriding many of the ‘rules’ around woven fabrication. In this exploratory departure Karen has held the control by structural sequencing and ordering but has allowed the changes in the nature of her materials as part of the creation process to disrupt the order and the final result.
The route to this departure is a new sequence in the loom room. Karen begins by creating her own ‘canvases’, painting them to create layered colour fields, uncreating the canvases, and finally recreating the canvases in mechanical rhythm. Regular forms become dispersed, bands of colour become zones of hazing and fusion, pixilating colours and textures. the formal becomes the organic, unbound and flowing through newly created layers of echoing and shadow. The rules of handwoven certainty are disrupted as are the patterns of our current world – the known shifting to become the unknown, the evocative but illusive.
Artist statement:
Just as chaos theory demonstrates the limitations of reductionist models to capture the richness of reality, “unraveling certainties” challenges us to confront the precariousness of assumptions. Immersing us in the disquieting beauty that emerges from the interplay of order and disorder, the pieces invite meditation on our struggle to find meaning and coherence in an uncertain world.
Bio
Karen Rubado was born in Christchurch but grew up in the United States before returning 30 years later. She now lives and works in Devonport, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland and completed a Master of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland in 2017.
Karen is a self-taught weaver who uses an a countermarche loom, four-shaft jack loom, rigid-heddle loom, and a variety of tapestry looms to create. Karen’s work with her loom challenges our emotional attachments to things, blurring the line between completed and incomplete, woven and unwoven. Her pieces capture a fleeting moment in time, reflecting the delicate balance between form and potential collapse, and speak to the indecisiveness and precariousness of the world.
Selected recent exhibitions include Tracing Intricacies at Webb’s Wellington (2024), detour and daydreams, a solo show at RM Gallery in Auckland (2023), The Table with the MotherMother Collective at the Aotearoa Art Fair, Auckland (2023) and Aotearoa, Land of the Long White Cloud at From Out of the Blue Studio Gallery, Opunake (2022).
Karen’s personal website is : https://karenrubado.com/
18th July – 26th August 2024
Karen will be In Residence for a week over the period of time she is installing and opening her solo exhibition. This will be a wonderful chance for everyone who met Karen when she was here back in 2022 to have a catch up and to see her new body of works, some inspired and initiated by her time here in Residency before.
Artist in Residence
October 7th – November 4th 2022.
Karen is the invited artist in residence this spring. She has a longterm project that will be started using the studio’s Lady Sunflower Loom in the upstairs workshop. The concept behind her exploratory practice is to weave a ‘canvas’, paint on that ‘canvas’, allow the painting to dry, unweave the work and then reweave it in the same order as it was originally created.
It is a fascinating thing to watch the unexpected and largely unpredictable results.
Karen has been a fantastic interactive resident talking to the many visitors to the gallery and studio space while she has been here.
Having Karen using the site has been the realisation of a dream come true for the gallery. This sharing of knowledge and use of equipment has been one of the underpinning pillars of this whole adventure so it is great to see it coming to be.
Many images of Karen’s work while here on Residency can be seen on her Instagram feed. @karenrubado. Please check it out and start to follow her practice there as she prepares for her solo exhibition in 2024.
Invitational Artist – Aotearoa – Land of The Long White Cloud. January20th – February 28th 2022.
Karen was at the gallery on Saturday, February 12th 2022 to talk about her her art practice.
Karen describes the works she has currently installed in Aotearoa – Land of The Long White Cloud:
These works were curated and created in response to the island we call home, Aotearoa. At the age of 4 my family moved to the United States where I remained for 30 years. I didn’t grow up near water for most of those years so it is with a continued sense of wonder, discovery and appreciation that I now find myself on an island.
sister
The alpaca fleece was gifted to me by a videographer friend who was creating a documentary about alpacas. I was interested in working with the raw fleece to see how it would perform and was drawn to the traces of the animals in the form of dust, dirt and debris.
Sister embodies the space and absence I share with my sister who lives far away from our home.
witness
Witness is a narrative work based on an encounter while visiting the island bird sanctuary of Tiritiri Matangi. It echoes the path taken, the unresolved mystery, and the interloper.
transit
Distance from other nations, from other people, from other events is something we’re all familiar with in Aotearoa, and with recent events it’s become even more difficult to close that gap. Transit speaks to the fragility and precarious state of physical connection beyond our shores.
The offering
The offering was inspired by my travels to the top of our island. Because of travel restrictions, this is the first time I spent three weeks holidaying in Aotearoa. Every single day was spent on the shore, in the sun, and in the water from Waiheke Island to Ahipara on the west coast, from Cape Reinga to Matauri Bay on the east coast, and from Russell back home to Devonport. I spent a lot of time marvelling at waves as they move symbiotically, responding to each other. Much like a dancer offering a hand to a partner, the waves connect and separate creating a dreamy choreography.
Karen Rubado deploys her loom, to do, to undo, and to make-do, both materially and to trouble and loosen our attachments to and associations with things. A strong element that runs throughout [her] works is that they are unresolved, and by being situated between being done and undone, woven and unwoven there is a sense that we are part of a fleeting moment in the fabric of time. This particular and fragile poise, between realized form and abject collapse, seems timely in a world that is equally poised. They are decidedly undecided and precarious.
(Julia Teale, 2021)