Tamworth gallery: Rebecca Mayo's textile artwork sent to Austria, Vienna

Textile artist Rebecca Mayo was so struck by the beauty of the trees in Tamworth that she invited locals to pick one they held dear to be part of her work, A Cure for Plant Blindness.

Locals took etchings from the base of the tree, recorded the species, location, time and date it was taken and described why the tree was special to them.

Now, those etchings feature on a textile artwork in the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts' major exhibition PLANET LOVE, Climate Care in the Digital Age.

Tamworth Regional Gallery director Bridget Guthrie said she was approached a couple of months ago by the Vienna Biennale for Change 2021.

"There's a number of individuals from Tamworth and their families that did the rubbings, so in that way it's lovely for them to know part of the extension of what they have contributed to is being exhibited in Austria," she said.

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"Rebecca Mayo is a fantastic textile artist and her process of working with community is really thoughtful."

Ms Mayo said the act of taking a rubbing meant each participant spent time with a tree.

"The stories that people wrote were also quite interesting as well, about these incidental moments in our lives, or trees that remember someone who dies - we have these relationships but we take them for granted," she said.

"It's a simple way to bring people back into connection with the plants they love."

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