Deborah Prior is an Adelaide-based artist who uses knitting, stitching and embroidery to transforms recycled textiles into art works, soft sculptures and installations that explore the body and the personal and social histories of domestic work.

In 2022 Prior had an exhibition at JamFactory Seppeltsfield, Deborah Prior: On the Third Day. One of the works from the exhibition, Grandmothers remembering Acacia blossoms falling after the rain, 2022, was acquired to join the Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art at UWA.

The work is currently being exhibited as part of Stuffed, Bolstered & Upholstered at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery until the 7th December 2024.

In the exhibition catalogue, Curator Lee Kinsella writes about this delicate, beautiful and compelling work:

The artist ‘honours the women who have gone before her ……Self-described on her Instagram page as a “Woolly Headed squatter on Kaurna Country”, Prior’s practice punctures Australian settler society – carefully unpicking and repurposing ‘blokey’ mythology and squatter narratives that are founded on merino wool and the grazing of livestock. Her work is a subtle exploration of the direct and ongoing implications of the enforced movement of Aboriginal peoples from their lands and the resulting cultural and environmental devastation’.