22.1.21 Breaking the rules
I have been invited to be a panellist on a webinar called Just Imagine: Break the rules. To prepare for it I reflected on the ways that my work breaks rules:
There are a number of ways that my work breaks the rules. Knitting and stitch are generally expected to be decorative, safe, clean, perfect and private pursuits but mine is deliberately not.
Subverting stereotypical expectations: My work challenges the stereotypical, gendered expectations of work with knitting and stitch in many ways. Cloth itself is regarded as a gendered material; Roszika Parker, in her book, The Subversive Stitch, analyses the gender divide between ‘high’ art and feminised craft and proposes that cloth is a signifier of the private, and thus feminine, sphere.
Unexpected materials: Materials have meaning. The critical theorists, Julia Kristeva and Mary Douglas, suggest that there are femininities associated with certain materials linked to dirt, contamination anxiety and the abject which add meaning. I often use unexpected materials, for example, second hand clothing, human hair, nails and recycled leather.
Unconventional medium: Cloth as an unconventional medium in sculpture also adds to the meaning it conveys. Traditionally, hard, durable materials like stone, marble and bronze have been used; the soft, impermanent nature of cloth, however, evokes the human form and its mortality.
Sloppy making: Craft is generally expected to be perfectly made, neat and finished. I often make my work look deliberately ‘sloppy’, rougher, gestural and emotive in order to communicate a range of alternative meanings and leave clear evidence of my making. It’s also often unfinished, and in the case of my knitting, unravelling.
Making public things that are normally private: My work often deals with subjects that people are reluctant to talk about, subjects that are taboo – like death, mental health, infertility, menopause.
Provocation: My work is a provocation in two very different ways. Some provokes conflicting responses like attraction, repulsion, horror and hilarity; some acts as a provocation by prompting participation, creativity, playfulness and connection. I want it all to stimulate curiosity, thought and discussion and sometimes action too.
Transgressive art: Transgressive art challenges ‘orthodox moral, social, and artistic boundaries … by the representation of unconventional behaviour and the use of experimental forms and by going beyond acceptable boundaries of taste, convention, or the law.’
I recognise elements of transgression in my work; I often deliberately flout convention by making work that explores cultural taboos. I often use the phrase 'I make public things that are normally private'. For a number of years I have made work that is abject, using body parts and talking about death.
Anomaly and ambiguity: However, I don't just want to provoke responses of repulsion and horror. I'm also interested in attraction and hilarity. My work explores the spaces between a number of binaries – Self and other, private/public, presence / absence, embodiment / disembodiment and, ultimately, life & death. Anthropologist, Mary Douglas suggests that these boundaries provide certainty; considering them as thresholds acknowledges them as flexible which leads to disquiet and a range of conflicting responses. She says ‘anomalous and ambiguous things are often seen as disgusting, disruptive, and dangerous. However, these are not the only possible reactions; there is a “whole gradient on which laughter, revulsion and shock belong at different points and intensities” according to the type of transgression (Douglas 1966, p 47).
She also says that ambiguity ‘symbolises both danger and power.’ (ibid, p. 94)
Body parts: Freud describes the uncanny as something familiar and yet not quite as it seems. ‘Freud's concept of the uncanny is also heavily connected to the idea of familiarity. Familiarity as a source of fear and discomfort can be seen in his castration example because what is more familiar to us than our own body? If parts of our or anyone's body are severed—parts of a body which we formerly recognized as a whole—we experience a deep sense of uncanniness’ (Baird, 2013, p5).
There are clear links between the uncanny and the abject, as both blur boundaries between Self and Other. Kristeva suggests that death is the ultimate in abjection.
There are a number of ways that my work breaks the rules. Knitting and stitch are generally expected to be decorative, safe, clean, perfect and private pursuits but mine is deliberately not.
Subverting stereotypical expectations: My work challenges the stereotypical, gendered expectations of work with knitting and stitch in many ways. Cloth itself is regarded as a gendered material; Roszika Parker, in her book, The Subversive Stitch, analyses the gender divide between ‘high’ art and feminised craft and proposes that cloth is a signifier of the private, and thus feminine, sphere.
Unexpected materials: Materials have meaning. The critical theorists, Julia Kristeva and Mary Douglas, suggest that there are femininities associated with certain materials linked to dirt, contamination anxiety and the abject which add meaning. I often use unexpected materials, for example, second hand clothing, human hair, nails and recycled leather.
Unconventional medium: Cloth as an unconventional medium in sculpture also adds to the meaning it conveys. Traditionally, hard, durable materials like stone, marble and bronze have been used; the soft, impermanent nature of cloth, however, evokes the human form and its mortality.
Sloppy making: Craft is generally expected to be perfectly made, neat and finished. I often make my work look deliberately ‘sloppy’, rougher, gestural and emotive in order to communicate a range of alternative meanings and leave clear evidence of my making. It’s also often unfinished, and in the case of my knitting, unravelling.
Making public things that are normally private: My work often deals with subjects that people are reluctant to talk about, subjects that are taboo – like death, mental health, infertility, menopause.
Provocation: My work is a provocation in two very different ways. Some provokes conflicting responses like attraction, repulsion, horror and hilarity; some acts as a provocation by prompting participation, creativity, playfulness and connection. I want it all to stimulate curiosity, thought and discussion and sometimes action too.
Transgressive art: Transgressive art challenges ‘orthodox moral, social, and artistic boundaries … by the representation of unconventional behaviour and the use of experimental forms and by going beyond acceptable boundaries of taste, convention, or the law.’
I recognise elements of transgression in my work; I often deliberately flout convention by making work that explores cultural taboos. I often use the phrase 'I make public things that are normally private'. For a number of years I have made work that is abject, using body parts and talking about death.
Anomaly and ambiguity: However, I don't just want to provoke responses of repulsion and horror. I'm also interested in attraction and hilarity. My work explores the spaces between a number of binaries – Self and other, private/public, presence / absence, embodiment / disembodiment and, ultimately, life & death. Anthropologist, Mary Douglas suggests that these boundaries provide certainty; considering them as thresholds acknowledges them as flexible which leads to disquiet and a range of conflicting responses. She says ‘anomalous and ambiguous things are often seen as disgusting, disruptive, and dangerous. However, these are not the only possible reactions; there is a “whole gradient on which laughter, revulsion and shock belong at different points and intensities” according to the type of transgression (Douglas 1966, p 47).
She also says that ambiguity ‘symbolises both danger and power.’ (ibid, p. 94)
Body parts: Freud describes the uncanny as something familiar and yet not quite as it seems. ‘Freud's concept of the uncanny is also heavily connected to the idea of familiarity. Familiarity as a source of fear and discomfort can be seen in his castration example because what is more familiar to us than our own body? If parts of our or anyone's body are severed—parts of a body which we formerly recognized as a whole—we experience a deep sense of uncanniness’ (Baird, 2013, p5).
There are clear links between the uncanny and the abject, as both blur boundaries between Self and Other. Kristeva suggests that death is the ultimate in abjection.