Ragged & Tagged & Flagged – Caroline Chisholm, Domesticity and the Victorian Goldfields by Dr Flossie Peitsch is an exhibition/installation featuring a series of white household pillowcases embellished with simple quilting designs. Using once fashionable damask table napkins, hung like flags zig-zagging the exhibition space like a clothesline.

Attached to them are many paper parcel tags inscribed with the names or positions of unheralded women – living and dead – deemed significant by the tag’s authors. It gives them the appearance of the tails of kites. On the walls are artistic facsimiles of hand-crafted, hooked rag floor-rugs. These bear traditional slogans or abstract patterns in traditional suffragette/feminist colours. These floor rugs are reminiscent of the hooked floor rugs of the1800s era, which women crafted from recycled household clothing.

Visitors will be invited to add their own inscribed tags to those already part of the installation as a fun and effective memorial to ordinary women, doing ordinary tasks during the period of the Victorian goldfields. There will be a free community workshop on Sunday 19 July, where visitors are invited to make a mini finger-hooked rug with Dr Flossie Pietsch. Please check the Central Goldfields Art Gallery website for more details.

Dr Flossie Peitsch is currently undertaking a Doctor of Philosophy through Federation University, Ballarat and this exhibition forms part of her thesis on Caroline Chisholm.