4. Proposal
10.10.20 Again, we weren't asked to write a proposal, so instead I have reflected on what I have done during this module. For the first 8 weeks we were still in isolation. To begin with it was still extremely limiting and we were confined to home and local walks and drives. In this time I knitted, performed with my knitting, stitched and continued to tend the Wishing tree, although much less frequently as time went by and more and more via social media.
Gradually lockdown eased a little, so we were able to travel further afield and I was able to situate my performances in more unexpected settings. Eventually we were able to return to Locksbrook, just the MA students and technicians and not very many of us! It was wonderful to have access to the workshops again. I feel I have made the most of this time, working with metal and mould making and learning so much from Si and Gareth. It has also been wonderful to be able to have side by side conversations with my peers in the studios. During lockdown Tim, Hannah, Sarah and I met every week via video, and I'm extremely grateful for that. For the past 8 weeks though, its been amazing to see everyone face to face.
Who knows though, what will happen in the next couple of weeks when the Undergraduates arrive? And the numbers of cases of Covid are increasing again...
returning to my peers, the studio and the workshops has been wonderful, but going to Bath 3 or 4 days a week has meant that I haven't finished my stitched canvas self portrait, sadly. However, I knew that I needed to focus on different materials and processes and use the facilities while they were available,. I can finish my stitched project at another time, as everything is set up at home. I had also planned a series of camouflage sculpture, maybe floor or wall based, made with old duvet covers and shower curtains and stitch. Again, another idea for another time. I'm really pleased with what I have achieved in this module,for the assimilation of new skills and processes with my knitting and I'm very excited about the final installation. However, I expect that every time I install these quirky assemblages they with shape shift. That's one of the many things I like about art that is reliant on the environment and space- the site responsiveness and flexibility.
I feel that changing the installation as I have, after the crit has improved it. It's more transgressive, quirky and funny but still maintains that deep sense of the uncanny. I'm very pleased and I hope that at some point it will have a wider audience.
What next?
I plan to develop further my metal and mould making skills and also research sculpting with other materials. I have plenty of ideas! I will also finish my canvas self portrait and possibly start work on my camouflage series. And I will always knit....
Gradually lockdown eased a little, so we were able to travel further afield and I was able to situate my performances in more unexpected settings. Eventually we were able to return to Locksbrook, just the MA students and technicians and not very many of us! It was wonderful to have access to the workshops again. I feel I have made the most of this time, working with metal and mould making and learning so much from Si and Gareth. It has also been wonderful to be able to have side by side conversations with my peers in the studios. During lockdown Tim, Hannah, Sarah and I met every week via video, and I'm extremely grateful for that. For the past 8 weeks though, its been amazing to see everyone face to face.
Who knows though, what will happen in the next couple of weeks when the Undergraduates arrive? And the numbers of cases of Covid are increasing again...
returning to my peers, the studio and the workshops has been wonderful, but going to Bath 3 or 4 days a week has meant that I haven't finished my stitched canvas self portrait, sadly. However, I knew that I needed to focus on different materials and processes and use the facilities while they were available,. I can finish my stitched project at another time, as everything is set up at home. I had also planned a series of camouflage sculpture, maybe floor or wall based, made with old duvet covers and shower curtains and stitch. Again, another idea for another time. I'm really pleased with what I have achieved in this module,for the assimilation of new skills and processes with my knitting and I'm very excited about the final installation. However, I expect that every time I install these quirky assemblages they with shape shift. That's one of the many things I like about art that is reliant on the environment and space- the site responsiveness and flexibility.
I feel that changing the installation as I have, after the crit has improved it. It's more transgressive, quirky and funny but still maintains that deep sense of the uncanny. I'm very pleased and I hope that at some point it will have a wider audience.
What next?
I plan to develop further my metal and mould making skills and also research sculpting with other materials. I have plenty of ideas! I will also finish my canvas self portrait and possibly start work on my camouflage series. And I will always knit....
6.9.20 Reflections on MF003
identity – self – self portrait – body - body parts - embodiment
individuation – death – uncanny - the abject – materiality
This work is a development of my work for MF002 as it also explores boundaries and contrasts. Some are the same, others different: Self/Other, public/private, inside/outside, hard/soft, permanent/impermanent, form/formlessness, seen/unseen
Individuation, multiple selves, the shadow and balance Carl Jung describes individuation as a process of self-actualisation which needs to occur in the second half of life. For him, it involves integrating the conscious with the unconscious. It’s about finding meaning in life and is ultimately a preparation for death. He talks about balancing our multiple selves with the dark side, or shadow, of ourselves and maintains that failure to acknowledge and accept this shadow can result in fragmentation and associated mental health issues. He also describes the shadow as being the seat of creativity, and creativity is linked to happiness.
Working with a carefully selected range of materials and processes, some familiar and some new to me, I have attempted to make visible certain aspects of individuation by making three sculptures, which, together, form a self-portrait, an embodiment of parts of my Self.
Self, self portraiture, death, the other, the uncanny and the abject Freud suggests that humans have a primitive urge to avoid death, to be immortal, which often makes us attempt to replicate ourselves. He claims, however, that often the double we have so carefully created, ‘reverses its aspect. From having been an assurance of immortality, it becomes the uncanny harbinger of death’. Freud describes the uncanny as something familiar and yet not quite as it seems, ‘unheimlich’. 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.
The materials and processes I have used each add meaning to the final assemblage. It’s made up of parts, some recognisable as uncanny replicas of body parts, others alluding to the body, specifically, my body. Knitting has associations with garments, comfort, domesticity and the body. It’s flexible, soft, impermanent; cloth surrounds us from birth to death. It’s unconventional as a medium in sculpture and has a number of femininities associated with it. Here, clothing yet unclothing, its drapes and folds reveal and conceal the inside and the outside of the sculpture and provide contrasts in colour, surface and form to the naïve metal skeletons and casts of my feet. I am highly skilled in knitting and a novice in metal work and mould making, and although I freely acknowledge some dissatisfaction with the outcomes of my explorations with new materials and processes, I feel that what I have made begins to take my work in new directions. It adds depth and meaning.
Metal and mould making are both recognised as traditional media for sculpture, so they have associations with the history of art. Metal is hard, durable and weatherproof, although, untreated, it will change over time. Jesmonite is resin and plaster based and is hard as well but is also fragile, breakable. The stunning detail of the casts of my deformed feet, together with the colour I’ve chosen and that they are body parts, provoke a range of conflicting responses – their familiarity makes them uncanny, disquieting.
Drawing with metal I regard the metal forms as drawings in space. The labour involved in making them required physical strength and force – bending, pushing, pulling, leaning, sweating, standing. I used all of my body and had bruises to show for it. I was manipulating a line, like knitting, but it’s much harder than using wool! Welding is a different kind of drawing, with a line of molten metal this time, but it’s also a connector, like metal glue or a stitch. I’m a novice and I’m not very good at it, but I decided that there are aspects of sloppy craft in my metal work, as there are in my knitting. My welds are functional, but barely; they are more significant to me as visible mends and gestural marks of my making.
The mould-making involved a different kind of physical work. On the first day, very generously, Alyson and Gareth undertook the skilled work of making the silicon moulds of my feet, but it meant that I had to stand, and then perch, for many hours. This is tiring in a different way, but I found it most interesting psychologically as I also found it very claustrophobic. I was literally stuck in one position, utterly helpless, for so long. There are also certain risks associated with body casting – shock, fainting and DVT amongst them. It’s a different kind of labour. After that, the processes of strengthening the moulds, trialling them and finally casting my feet in Jesmonite involved days of physical activity again - walking, lifting, standing, pulling, pushing, clamping, pouring. I love that both these new processes are so physical but also that they involve plenty of mental and emotional labour too - thinking, learning, making decisions, problem solving and waiting, of course.
I am a maker and, even though these processes and the materials are outwardly so different, they have a number of things in common - labour, time and episodes of flow – which all seem to be important in my practice.
Performance is another important aspect of this final outcome, although it is not presented as such. In normal times, I would have offered my knitted sculptures as participatory art, inviting my viewer to take on a selection of different identities by wearing them. During lockdown and these strange days of contamination anxiety (Douglas, Kristeva), I have had to wear them myself. I become a living sculpture. I’m a reluctant performer, so my performances have been private, with no audience, documented by my partner. In hindsight, they track the changes in lockdown rules- initially documented exclusively at home, then gradually in spaces outside and then further afield.
My knitted shrouds were knitted as Body cocoons and explore boundaries, but they also encapsulate the range of emotions surrounding the pandemic which also parallel the struggles of individuation. For this module, I spent the first 8 weeks working at home and the second 8 weeks back at Locksbrook, able to have conversations with my peers again, and with access to technicians, workshops and conventional studio space.
My initial idea was to use poses from the documentation of me struggling inside my cocoons to make stands for my knitted pieces. I planned to cast my feet in concrete, so that they would be visible beneath the shrouds, just as they are when I wear them. However, the utter physicality of the metal and mould making processes made me realise that these separate body parts were also becoming parts of me, so I decided I wanted them to be part of the sculptures, not just hangers. My body was involved in so many hard physical processes that it has left traces of me, metaphorically and literally, in the metal rod and the Jesmonite. Like artist Orly Genger, who constructs large scale hand knotted installations, I feel that ‘if I could put my body into my work that would be the ultimate’ (in Kino, 2013).
For these sculptures, the cocoons have been partially shed.
Mary Shelley’s story of Victor Frankenstein who attempts to create a living being resonates strongly with my work – the obsession, the gathering and joining of parts, the labour and time spent, the creation, birth and, finally, the ‘othering’ of the created by the creator all seem to be relevant. My assemblages feel like my Frankenstein’s monsters – awkward, ugly, ungainly, uncanny, abject in many ways yet also vulnerable, complex, poignant, precarious and oddly beautiful, if you look closely.
Echoing crochet artist Olek, for me, ‘life…and art are inseparable’ (in Vannier, 2018, p91) and
Kino, C. (2013) The rope wrangler, ideas unfurling 1 May Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/arts/design/orly-genger-in-madison-square-park.html (Accessed 20 December 2019)
Vannier, C., (2018) Unravelled: Contemporary Knit Art. London: Thames and Hudson
