The lovely Tara Badcock...

You can’t imagine how excited I was when I received an e-mail back from Tara Badcock of Paris+Tasmania. Ever since first coming across her amazing art textiles while assisting stylist Sibella Court, I can’t stop raving about her to anyone and everyone.

I was surprised to hear that Tara is largely self taught in hand embroidery – something she considers to be fortunate as she follows “no set structure about the way I work and devise designs. It is a very intuitive process”.

I want you all to know about her too. So here is the Tara Badcock story in a nutshell followed by a Q&A which Tara kindly agreed to help me with. Enjoy!
Tara trained as a printmaker, printing her stone-printed lithographs onto silks and other fabrics and then stitching these into replicas of 17th, 18th and 19th Century women's dresses.

After completing her Fine Arts Degree with First Class Honours from the University of Tasmania, Tara couldn't afford to set up her own Lithography Printing Studio, and so she worked from home adapting several techniques from her lithographic repertoire in order to continue print-applying imagery onto textiles, which she then started adding to with embroidered details and taught herself general embroidery techniques in order to do this.

It was in Paris where she spent nearly three years living and working where she really found her feet as a textile artist. On her return to Australia she did a small business course to learn how manage the retail world and start to seriously working towards developing a clothing label - her childhood dream….
Who has had the most influence on your career?
I joined a group of professional textile artists who would meet every Tuesday to work and share professional opportunities to further promote textile art together, and we were known as The Embroidery Gang. We are now all spread out all over the planet, and yet the influence this group and our objectives are still a strong part of my professional life and the members of the Gang are all treasured friends.

With this group there was a conscious aim to promote contemporary embroidery and experimentation within the fine art world, as a 'serious concern' and legitimate method of creating artwork. Since this time I have noticed a real surge in textile art practices and a much higher regard and real value for textiles. I really believe that (hand) embroidery, like clothing, is a vehicle for communicating with others- from the most intimate messages to the most grand and worldly concepts, its such a versatile and eloquent medium and this is why I'm still so passionate about embroidery and continue to use it to express myself. So really, my embroidery and I have grown up together and clothing is just another 'canvas' onto which I now apply my imagery and conceptual ideas.

I would say that my artistic peers and supportive artistic family have had the most impressive influence on my career...my friends and family are so supportive and having spent those few years living and making work in France was essential to boosting my self-confidence in my chosen arts field and seeing that although Australia is still sports-obsessed and still has little regard for the arts as a national pastime, this is not the only outlook in the world...France is so steeped in the arts and supports the arts in every aspect, it is so heartening to be in that kind of environment and to be taken seriously and considered professionally as an artist. I now trust my inner artist's voice more than anything else!
Where do you look for inspiration?
Mainly I find inspiration from what I am reading at the time, random objects in my immediate environment as well as what is going on in my immediate environment, Paris and my things from there, friends and family inspire me as do other people's artwork and exhibitions on museums, etc...its really just whatever is around and what triggers a response in my mind, its very unpredictable and always fascinating to see what I find inspiring at any given moment....there are some things which just stay with me and continuously inspire me and they're part of my 'secret garden'...the garden of my mind!
Do you have a hidden talent (apart from your amazing art textiles!)?
I love experimenting with cooking and my Paris friends think I make amazing salads! I also grew up with a passion for mimicry and copying accents and I love learning new languages...and my drawing skills are pretty good, although I don't spend enough time drawing for the sake of drawing alone...which is probably why I've started drawing/stitching freehand on textiles with my Bernina sewing machine!!
What do you collect?
I have a passion for Victorian white ceramic jelly moulds which I'm collecting slowly (they're becoming quite expensive now), as well as antique tea cosies, teapots, teacups and teasets....I guess I generally collect antique kitchenaelia, glass and ceramics, which all inspire my embroidery work. I also have a good collection of antique Victorian clothing which I turn to for inspiration regularly too...Oh and my books! I cannot live without my library of art, textile and other reference books! Whenever I have a stable home I tend to collect plants too...unusual and old-fashioned plants are my favourites!
In whose house would you love to find one of your designs in?
Ooooh....anyone's house really...I don't have any great aspirations to appeal to specific people with my work anymore...I just feel that I need to be happy and love what I make and it will appeal to others and that this is enough. Before I fell pregnant I really wanted my work to find its way into the homes of people like Vivienne Westwood, Germiane Greer, John Galliano, Tilda Swinton, Carolyn Quartermaine, to name a few people I admire....and yet there are so many amazing people out there in the world that I prefer my work to just find its way to them when the time is right...I do love it when friends and family want me to make them things, its always so flattering and a pleasure to make for people I know as well as making for the retail/exhibition world.

What has been your best decision?
To follow my heart and live in Paris (France) for some years....even though I had no money and few friends, it was THE best thing I have ever done in my life...and now I'm going to be a mother for the first time so I'll see what I say after the baby is born!!
If you could travel through time, where would you visit and why?
This question is really hard for me answer because I know I would want to visit thousands of places at various times and be able to revisit them with hundred-year intervals for example...I guess a few easy answers would be Cairo in the 1920's...the age of biplanes and dashing adventurers and Egyptology blossoming, Le Marche des Halles in Paris at the turn of the 20th century because now this very famous, smelly fish market is a boring civic park in the middle of Paris with little hint of what it used to be...alive and raw! I want to go to Morocco NOW...in fact northern Africa and Mauritania are at the top of my wish list of travel destinations- I had a lovely Moroccan boyfriend a few years ago and we had lots of plans to live there and make art together....life is a strange and beautiful journey......
Biggest guilty pleasure?
Buying antique fabrics, buttons, clothes, anything that adds to my collections....I really cannot afford to do it and yet I really cannot stop! I will go without food to have something that is instantly like finding an 'old friend'.....like the time I bought a dark red velvet-upholstered antique armchair for $1000...the memories of hunger and deprivation fade and one is left with a timeless and treasured, functional object...an heirloom!

Tara stocks her wears all throughout Australia and recently her designs have made it into Anthropologie on the US. For a list of stockist please contact Tara or myself. Visit the Paris+Tasmania website or Tara's Flickr page for more information.

Thank you Tara for your wonderful insight and inspiration!

Images via Flickr, Design*Sponge, Grazia Magazine