Annemieke Mein's Barnacles sculpture makes her the accidental feminist

IT wasn't Annemieke Mein's intention that her artwork Barnacles should be interpreted as a provocative feminist statement.

Annemieke Mein, Barnacles (1984-87)

IT wasn't Annemieke Mein's intention that her artwork Barnacles should be interpreted as a provocative feminist statement.

However, the three-dimensional textile sculpture, with its suggestive labia, has been viewed as a feminist art piece, linked with goddess art and its representation of female genitalia.

In fact, Mein has a particular interest in wildlife art and Barnacles reflects her love and concern for nature. While she appreciates how her textile sculpture could be misread as a vagina, she says: "It is interesting for me to realise that no shape in nature is entirely novel; so many forms are repeated constantly, others only rarely."

Mein has had a lifelong interest in barnacles, ever since she spent pleasurable time as a child at the beach. She even collected different varieties of the arthropod, attached to wood, wine bottles, polystyrene, other shells, and to each other.

Although she has always had a fascination with barnacles, it was a specific incident that motivated her to make Barnacles.

In 1984, when she was driving down the main street in Sale, in Victoria, she noticed a truck loaded with huge metal pipes. As the truck passed, she saw the pipes were covered with barnacles, so she chased down the truck and got it to pull over. Even though the truck driver no doubt thought she was eccentric, she managed to persuade him to let her chisel some barnacles off the pipes.

It was these 8cm-high barnacles that inspired her sculpture.

Mein, who was born in The Netherlands in 1944, migrated to Australia with her family when she was seven. In the early 1970s, she moved to Victoria's Gippsland region and it was this move that encouraged the development of her nature-based art of using fabric and thread.

Although Mein considers her practice more closely aligned to wildlife art than textile art, she's considered a key practitioner in the Australian craft movement.

Before the creation of Barnacles, Mein carried out extensive research, field study trips, observation and specimen collection, and made countless sketches.

To achieve the effect of layer upon layer of barnacles, she painstakingly employed a number of techniques such as quilting, hand sewing, embroidery, padding, sculpting and stuffing. The barnacles were made by layering silk organza with different shades of cream and brown silk, wool, cotton and fabric off-cuts. Many reels of unravelled sewing cotton threads were twined and tied in place to simulate the swirling seaweed and, to catch the light and water droplets, she attached cream, pearl and glass beads.

Barnacles is now on display at the regional gallery in Ararat, about 200km west of Melbourne. Since the mid-70s the gallery has specialised in collecting textile and fibre art, and it holds many wonderful objects, representing major Australian artists.

When I visit, I'm shown Mein's work by the director, Anthony Camm, who says that her craftsmanship is of a "very high level".

"Mein is admired for her ability to push the technical and pictorial boundaries of textile materials," Camm says.

"Her popularity is unique among Australian artists, but the fervent grassroots attention her work attracts contrasts strikingly with the quiet determination and painstaking research that guides its creation.

"Her motivation as an artist is to bring the viewer closer to experiencing her own deeply felt connection to nature."

Camm says Mein uses colour in an adventurous way. "There is really an absence of colour in this work," he points out. "This means you can focus on the beauty, the simplicity of the form, and the embroidery, which looks like drawing, and which is also further enhanced by the very subtle spare beading. We celebrate practitioners like Mein, and Barnacles is a testament to [the art form's] power and integrity."

Annemieke Mein, Barnacles (1984-com1987). Ararat Regional Art Gallery Collection. Purchased with donations from visitors to the Annemieke Mein exhibition, Ararat Regional Art Gallery, 2011. On display, Ararat Regional Art Gallery, Ararat, Victoria.