Jutta Feddersen

Jutta Feddersen (5 August 1931 Briesen –19 December 2021, Sydney) was a German-born Australian fibre artist, sculptor, lecturer.

Early life and education Born Jutta Schley in Briesen, Germany on 5 August 1931 into a prosperous farming family, Feddersen was orphaned with her four siblings during WW2. In the care of her aunt Dora Wedding they fled the Russian soldiers. Separated from her family she endured privation, typhoid and imprisonment, before she was able to rejoin them. She undertook a Diploma Fibre Art at the Handwerkskammer (Chamber of Crafts) in Bremen in 1953, and was employed as a weaver.

Australia At age 25 Feddersen made a successful application to teach hand-weaving at Sturt College, part of the Frensham School in Mittagong, Australia, departing Germany 19 Dec 1956 on the Castel Felice for a two year visit, and there met mechanic Lorenz Feddersen who had come from Germany in 1955. In 1959 they married after her return to Australia. Daughter Kirstin was born in 1963 and they revisited Germany in 1968 before the birth Melanie the following year. Jutta meanwhile worked as an occupational therapist at Concord Repatriation Hospital and in factories and the couple moved to Elanora Heights. She purchased looms and began to weave at home, marketing her ties, curtains, carpets and dresses.

Her work was exhibited in her first solo shows in 1965 and 1967 at Hungry Horse and Aladdin galleries, and at a 1971 Design Centre exhibition opened by Bernard Smith her work was described by The Sydney Morning Herald as "a free-hanging, stainless steel rope. Strands of rope fell and twirled in a parallel linear movement at once mobile yet rigid." In interview, Feddersen explained that *Actually it's fishing tackle rope. I dyed it in tar but it didn't take the tar properly, so that's why its a rather interesting brownish black. This hanging is just an example of a different use of a material." At her solo show at Realities Gallery in Melbourne Fedderson explained: "Over the years my work has changed greatly, at first, weaving was a craft I enjoyed, but slowly as it took on a sculptured look it became more of an art. I get most of my inspiration from nature. When I get a new idea I put it into practice several times and then tire of it and go on to another idea. So I suppose I am improving all the time." Around this time she and husband Lorenz amicably separated. and interior decorators, and she was sought out as a teacher, taking simultaneous positions at Newcastle University, Willoughby Arts Centre and Alexander Mackie College before being taking full-time position at Newcastle and commuting from Sydney.

Elwyn Lynn was fulsome in his praise at the July 1970 group show with Ken Reinhard, Fred Cress and Jamie Boyd at Bonython Galleries; "Jutta Feddersen’s tied, handspun, woven and knotted wallhangings deserve the highest praise; space, not some critics’ quaint notion that silence is the right attitude before really fine art, limits expression of one’s enthusiasm for these heirs of Abstract Expressionism and opponents of Bauhaus propriety; there are splendidly deep-textured rugs ($300 and $360), a five-foot-high orange ogre-like jelly-fish with hanging green, crimson, and purple legs or roots; a heavily knotted black-green jute banner has two threatening steel eyes; a linen-and-rayon hanging has tails of the old grey mare bound into loops with brilliant colors. In the centre, a 78in.-high black piece of twine twists from one ceiling hoop to three at the bottom; it’s a fantastically fragile piece, and is at the other end of the imaginative spectrum from Reinhard; her material and imagination grow together." Ann Galbally reviewed for The Age the group show inaugurating the Realities Gallery, Melbourne; "Most attractive of the presentations are the six tapestries by Jutta Feddersen. Her inspiration is undoubtedly the totems of primitive art. But these forms are exorcised of their original awesomeness and baptisted into respectability by the pleasing materials used knotted jute, tied linen, silk and wool - and by the appealing simplicity of their construction."

Exhibitions

Selected solo

1965, June: Jutta Federsen. Hungry Horse Gallery 1967, June: New Weaving by Jutta Feddersen. Aladdin Gallery, 45a Elizabeth Bay Road, King's Cross 1975, December: Bonython Galleries

Selected group 1969, February: Entries for the Stuttgart Craft Exhibition. Bonython Gallery, Sydney; Macquarie Galleries, Sydney 1969, from 16 September: Second biennial exhibition, N.S.W. branch of the Craft Association of Australia, opened by Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Sydney, Professor Bernard Smith. Design Centre, Sydney. 1971, 14 May – 5 May: Jutta Feddersen tapestries; Richard Anuszkiewicz silkscreen prints; Michael McKinnon kinetics; Oiva Toikka glass sculptures. Inaugural exhibition of Realities Gallery, Melbourne 1988: Mildura Sculpture Triennial National Gallery of Victoria Queensland Art Gallery Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences Ararat Regional Art Gallery

Publications

Awards

1974: Visual Arts Board Grant 1978: Craft Board Grant $250 toward costs associated with participating in the first German Tapestry Exhibition 1978: Warringah Shire prize 1982; Visual Arts Board Grant 1992, 1993, 1994: research grants, Uni. Newcastle 2004/5: $25,000 New Work - Developing Writers Grant. Australia Council