Suffrage in Stitches

Overview

Wellington Museum is celebrating the people who made up the suffrage movement with a unique exhibition that brings together history and New Zealand artists.

Featured in the museum's Flux space, the Suffrage in Stitches work is 300 metres long, with 546 individually designed fabric panels and 27,000 individual hand stitches. The length of the fabric, the panels and stitches represent the number of pages in the original petition and the women and men who signed it. In new work, the document that led to women gaining the right to vote comes to life.

NZ citizens and residents, including a handful of professional Kiwi artists, all contributed to the work. Each panel, which is made from recycled materials, shares stories of those who signed and the generations that followed.

The work was created to honour the 31,872 people who signed in 1893 and presented the document to Parliament, setting in motion a series of events that have led us to today. The project has resulted in many people of different backgrounds and abilities coming together to create the work, the organisers say. It was created by Caroline O'Reilly of Vinnies Re Sew in partnership with Wellington Museum.

Image: Wellington Museum.