Meet the first in a new series, inspired by a visit last year of Threads of Feeling at the Foundling Museum, a moving exhibition of selected textile tokens from the 18th century, at the time the only permitted means of identification for the babies left at London Foundling Hospital’s doors.
I crocheted the piece with a thin hook as I wanted a weave of tight, dense stitches, almost unyielding to the touch, like a suit of armour, a carapace of sorts. A shape to grow into or out of… The work is deliberately flat while preserving the potential wearability of a garment. I’m drawn to between-ness – 2D/3D, outfit/image, crochet/painterly, real/imaginary, sweet/perturbing.
Much of my work is about inscribing difference in a subtle, intimate way: something missing, something in excess, something just very slightly other, that catches you unaware, stings you a little and then a little more.
Would you think that crocheting leaves (admittedly small) marks on the body? I managed to get another callus on the tip of my left middle-finger, with a wee hole at its centre… Ouch!
My Acrobat was not selected for Outside the White Cube, alas. No somersaults… In need of chocolate, kisses, spirits, in that order.
But I’m glad I’m writing here about my first foundling, it’s focused my thinking and given me another idea, a new place to take things. Yay! Somersaults after all.
Foundling (2011/12)
Material: Crocheted from cotton-thread
Dimensions: 24 cm x 28 cm
