During Sydney’s lockdown in March, when the NAS campus closed, second-year students Rani Matthews and Anna Mould initiated a community craft project, called the Corona Quilt, inviting other students working in isolation to create their own quilt square on the theme of COVID-19 crisis. When the students were able to come together again, the squares would be sewn together to create a group artwork and momento of this strange and difficult time. The quilt would become a material platform for making meaning and building connections at a time when human communication had shifted to the digital realm.

Students, staff and alumni of the National Art School have participated in this virtual quilting bee, creating quilt squares responding to the health, economic and social crises caused by the pandemic. Anna and Rani are leading the final stage of the project, sewing the squares together, and the finished quilt will be shown during Sydney Craft Week at the East Sydney Doctors display window opposite the National Art School.

Anna and Rani, with their lecturers Dr Molly Duggins and Dr Priya Vaughan who have assisted with the project, will participate in an accompanying Art Forum talk via Zoom for Sydney Craft Week. They will discuss quilt-making as a historically rich, tactile language of form used to document everyday experience, commemorate significant personal and public events, and raise awareness of topical political issues.

Corona Quilt Sydney Craft Week Exhibition
Friday 9 October – Sunday 18 October, East Sydney Doctors display window, 102 Burton Street, Darlinghurst (opposite the National Art School)

Corona Quilt Art Forum Talk 
Wednesday 14 October, 12.30 – 1.30pm via Zoom, join at https://​us02web​.zoom​.us/​j​/​8​2​5​7​3​6​42835
For more information see coro​n​aquilt​nas​.word​press​.com and syd​n​ey​craftweek​.com