User:Margieamedlin/sandbox

Pru Lamotte (1928-2020) Pru was a feminist who worked across many mediums. Born in 1928, Maitland, South Australia of Amarantha La Motte (Turner) and Walter Lethbridge.

Pru's early work was inspired by her extensive travel in Ghana, West Africa in 1959. Pru studied weaving at the Oxford College of Technology in 1960-62. In the 1964 she moved with her husband and two children from Oxford the Brisbane. There she learnt ceramics with friend Milton Moon at the Queensland Art School and drawing with Jon Molvig. Pru specialized in large hand collided pots. In 1968 she studied weaving with Louise Todd in Philadelphia in the U.S.A. Moving to Adelaide she set-up a loom she inherited from her father and began weaving. Pru was prolific in the 1970s, she hand dyed and spun her fleece, creating, soft sculptures, cloths and decorative wall hangings. She was the inaugural and only master and director of the weaving workshop at the Jam Factory Adelaide 1975-1978. In the early 1980s when her children where grown-up she abandoned weaving for academic studies. After completing several degrees in the 1990s Pru started writing fiction and saying she had turned away from the culture of anger and confrontation to that of interrogating complexities, but humour has always been an important part of her work. In the 2000s she returned to drawing and took up oil painting. Pru published her first novel “ A Perverse Romance A Tourist Dance to Art and Satirical Provocation”  in 2018.

Exhibitions
2011. Exhibition of paintings with an artist’s book A Mockery: 9 faces of Qu’r, SALA,

1981. Performance: The Legend of Penelope p The Weaver as Unraveller, Central Market, Adelaide.

1979 Group Exhibition Contemporary Tapestry Weaving in Australia 1978    Sydney Festival, Crafts Council of  Australia, Sydney.

1978 Group Exhibition One Form Adelaide festival of Arts am Factory, Adelaide South Australia.

1978 Australian Weavers in Wool Exhibition, The Australian Wool Corporation, Melbourne.

1977 Group Exhibition Jam Factory, Adelaide South Australia.

1976 Group Exhibition South Australian Five for the Festival, master artist craftsmen based in Adelaide, Playhouse Gallery Adelaide festival of Arts

1976 Group Exhibition Jam Factory, Adelaide South Australia.

1975/76  Group Exhibition Woolworks The  Ararat Art Gallery, V.I.C

1974 Group Exhibition Australia's choice of Crafts 1974 World Crafts Exhibition in Toronto, Canada.

1974 Group Exhibition Desbourgh Galleries Perth

1973 Solo Exhibition of tapestries at the newly opened Adelaide Festival Centre Gallery, Adelaide

1972 Solo Exhibition of tapestries Bonython Gallery, Sydney:

1972 Group Exhibition Realities,  Melbourne.

1972 The “Wool” at the Art Gallery of South Australia in;

1972 Art Gallery of N.S.W. Traveling craft exhibition.

1970 Group Exhibition  Bonython Gallery, Adelaide, S.A.

1970 First World Craft Council Asian Craft Exhibition, New Zealand.

1969 Weaving, City Cross Crafts, Adelaide.

Pottery in various mixed exhibitions, Brisbane and Adelaide.

Community
1977-81 Member of the Crafts Board of the Australia Council.

1973 -1978  Member of S.A. Arts Grants Advisory Committee.

Pru was an member of the Crafts Council of South Australia, she was an organizer and teacher of the their Summer School where she taught soft sculptor and loom-making. Hahndorf 1971, Tatatachilla 1972.

Pru was also an active member of the Fiber Collective and The Spinners and Weavers Guild South Australia.

Collections
Pru received several public commissions from overseas, including Nieman Marcus, and the  Murchison Collection, Dallas, U.S.A. Art Gallery of South Australia, Crown Prince of Jordan. And numerous private commissions in Australia, France and the U.K.

Publications
See Patricia Thompson, Twelve Australian Craftsmen (A&R), 1973; Fay Bottrell, The Artist Craftman in Australia (Jack Pollard), 1972; Register of Women in non-traditional occupations, Education Dept. of S.A. 1978.

Australian Crafts, a survey of recent work, catalogue of exhibition organized by the Crafts Board of the Australia Council, 1978.

(All references in the name Pru Medlin)

Women in the Arts Project, (Australia Council), Sydney 1982.

Supported anti-apartheid movements since 1959.

Active in the women’s movement from 1964 when as a member of the newly launched Equal Opportunities for Women (EOW) in QLD, we challenged laws which banned women being served alcoholic drinks in the from bar of hotels with a pub crawl round Brisbane. Recorded by Four Corners it is included in the tape made to celebrate their silver jubilee.

