Creative Residents Program

rewind FORWARD

Victorian Archives Centre

Public Records Office Victoria 2025

 

​TEXTILE MEMORIAL: Victoria’s Backyard Abortions aims to disrupt the coldness of archival records by using fabric—an intimate medium tied to the body. Fabric resonates with our collective experiences, surpassing time and space, creating connections that traditional archives often overlook.

 

This project engages with the 965 Inquest Deposition Files held by Public Record Office Victoria (PROV), which detail the tragic deaths of women who underwent clandestine abortions in Victoria between 1859 and 1973.

 

These files, laden with names and narratives, reveal the historical violence inflicted on women’s bodies by the systems that governed them. I used machine stitching to embroider the first names of all 965 women onto black cloth, linking each name to the next.  This acts to join the women’s personal stories in a gesture to recall their collective experience and the grim conditions they all faced.

 

TEXTILE MEMORIAL draws on the cognisant nature of fabric – its capacity to hold memory and intimacy – alongside stitching, a historical women’s practice to create a space for reflection and mourning for these women’s deaths. The work invites visitors at the Victorian Archives Centre Gallery to engage with these stories and to hold—if only momentarily—the emotional weight of the personal and collective narratives preserved within the archives.

​​​

​​

​

TEXTILE MEMORIAL: Victoria's Backyard Abortions

Machine stitched embroidery on linen-silk fabric

330 x 233cm

2025

​

All images by PROV

​​

​

​Shannon would like to extend an enormous thanks to PROV for their incredible support for this project and the opportunity to be one of five artists who took up residency to respond to the Victorian archives in 2025.

​​​

​

​

See me talk about the project here: https://youtu.be/0Hep-poSkdU

 

Read about the exhibition at PROV site here: https://prov.vic.gov.au/whats/creative-residence-program

 

Listen to me talk about the exhibition on Melbourne radio station RRR: https://www.rrr.org.au/shared/broadcast-episode/33745/6379000/7031000

​