Emma Buswell: Selected knitted works 2017-2020

The key work on show is her original COVID-19 jumper titled There’s nothing unlawful about going for run and eating a kebab. It illustrates phrases from Premier Mark McGowan’s speech about the lockdown, in particular the part when he starts to laugh, along the translator and his minder, about the policing of “going for a run” and “getting a kebab”. 

Buswell’s work celebrates this strangely tender moment and break in public-facing tension, by using home/hand-craft to personalise and embed it within a broader lineage of the Australian vernacular. By referring to a you-tube hit, it also speaks about how points of temporary social cohesion are formed through slips and fractures in official positions.