Counter Top

South Australian contemporary artist and globally celebrated crochet maestro Trevor Smith will bring a kitchen cabinet of woven wonders to Murrurundi with the opening of his latest solo exhibition, Counter Top. 

Available to view and shop online ahead of its arrival at the gallery next week, this new series of bold and ebullient crochet sculptures cooks up a lovingly nostalgic tribute to the quirky accoutrements that memorably furnished mid-century-modern Australian homes and now seem redolent of that era’s optimism and élan.

Like a 1950s Women’s Weekly cookbook come glittering to life, this collection turns the colourful utilitarian objects that covered our Formica benchtops in a bygone design moment into totemic works of woollen art whose fabulous fuzzy forms are threaded with more than a soupçon of wistfulness and wit.

Woven with pure wool yarn, the retro visions of Counter Top range from toasters, kettles and fondue cookers to spice racks, kitchen scales and rotary phones – all immortalised with the extraordinary craftsmanship and lashings of irreverent style that have garnered Smith international acclaim over his decades-long career.