28.1.21 Notes for Just imagine: Break the rules
My idea:
As soon as we went into the first lockdown in England last March I began to wonder how I was going to be able to facilitate participatory art when I couldn’t be in the same space as other people and when they couldn’t touch anything that I’d touched? After a few days, I decided to set up a Wishing tree on the tree on the pavement outside my house and put a note on it, inviting passers-by to bring something hopeful to add next time they walked this way. I put a photo of it on social media and almost straight away I began to get requests, from people around the world, asking me to add their messages as well!
I was delighted that within a couple of days, messages, drawings and objects began to appear from local people too.
In the end I set up 4 physical wishing trees in public green spaces on my daily walks and many hundreds of people found connection and solace through them. It’s almost as if there was a fifth, virtual Wishing tree on social media too as many more people engaged with it, and me, online.
1.Knitting and stitch
Process: Knitting and stitch are stereotypically gendered, associated with domesticity and comfort. They’re meant to be benign, decorative, functional, perfect, finished and private. I subvert these expectations by making work that deals with difficult issues, sometimes using unexpected materials like second hand clothing, human hair, nails, an old duvet or recycled leather. I make intentionally ‘sloppy’, gestural work that is unfinished, unravelling and often situate it in an unusual setting. Combining these different aspects means that my work provokes a range of conflicting responses - attraction, repulsion, horror and hilarity.
Cloth is an unconventional medium in sculpture which 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.
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.
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.
2.Participatory art
Touch is very important in my practice. Normally, in an art gallery, there are signs saying ‘Do not touch’; I often invite people to not only touch but to wear my work. More than a third of us are kinaesthetic learners, so offering opportunities to participate in making or doing something will engage many people. There’s also often something about it that stimulates curiosity, playfulness, discussion and connection.
3.Art in unexpected places
The setting for an art work can add meaning. Taking art out of a gallery might also mean that it’s more accessible to a broader and more diverse audience. I think many people find art galleries alien at best and intimidating at worst. I love the challenge of installing my work in unexpected places – a decommissioned prison, on a tree in a green public place, in an empty shop, a disused Edwardian toilet block, in a forest, on the beach. In the more public spaces I often have the most interesting and thought provoking conversations.
4.Ambiguity, dirt and disorder
Anomaly and ambiguity: The anthropologist Mary Douglas talks about order and disorder as anomaly and ambiguity. She describes dirt as ‘matter out of place’ so shoes on the shoe rack are fine, but shoes on the table are not, hair is beautiful, until it’s in your soup. My work explores the spaces between order and disorder but also a number of other binaries – Self and other, private/public, presence / absence, embodiment / disembodiment and, ultimately, life & death. Douglas suggests that these boundaries provide certainty but 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.
My idea:
As soon as we went into the first lockdown in England last March I began to wonder how I was going to be able to facilitate participatory art when I couldn’t be in the same space as other people and when they couldn’t touch anything that I’d touched? After a few days, I decided to set up a Wishing tree on the tree on the pavement outside my house and put a note on it, inviting passers-by to bring something hopeful to add next time they walked this way. I put a photo of it on social media and almost straight away I began to get requests, from people around the world, asking me to add their messages as well!
I was delighted that within a couple of days, messages, drawings and objects began to appear from local people too.
In the end I set up 4 physical wishing trees in public green spaces on my daily walks and many hundreds of people found connection and solace through them. It’s almost as if there was a fifth, virtual Wishing tree on social media too as many more people engaged with it, and me, online.
1.Knitting and stitch
Process: Knitting and stitch are stereotypically gendered, associated with domesticity and comfort. They’re meant to be benign, decorative, functional, perfect, finished and private. I subvert these expectations by making work that deals with difficult issues, sometimes using unexpected materials like second hand clothing, human hair, nails, an old duvet or recycled leather. I make intentionally ‘sloppy’, gestural work that is unfinished, unravelling and often situate it in an unusual setting. Combining these different aspects means that my work provokes a range of conflicting responses - attraction, repulsion, horror and hilarity.
Cloth is an unconventional medium in sculpture which 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.
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.
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.
2.Participatory art
Touch is very important in my practice. Normally, in an art gallery, there are signs saying ‘Do not touch’; I often invite people to not only touch but to wear my work. More than a third of us are kinaesthetic learners, so offering opportunities to participate in making or doing something will engage many people. There’s also often something about it that stimulates curiosity, playfulness, discussion and connection.
3.Art in unexpected places
The setting for an art work can add meaning. Taking art out of a gallery might also mean that it’s more accessible to a broader and more diverse audience. I think many people find art galleries alien at best and intimidating at worst. I love the challenge of installing my work in unexpected places – a decommissioned prison, on a tree in a green public place, in an empty shop, a disused Edwardian toilet block, in a forest, on the beach. In the more public spaces I often have the most interesting and thought provoking conversations.
4.Ambiguity, dirt and disorder
Anomaly and ambiguity: The anthropologist Mary Douglas talks about order and disorder as anomaly and ambiguity. She describes dirt as ‘matter out of place’ so shoes on the shoe rack are fine, but shoes on the table are not, hair is beautiful, until it’s in your soup. My work explores the spaces between order and disorder but also a number of other binaries – Self and other, private/public, presence / absence, embodiment / disembodiment and, ultimately, life & death. Douglas suggests that these boundaries provide certainty but 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.