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On Friday I took the train up to London to go to Soho and buy fabric for the vintage 1917-ish knitting bag that I plan to make for my performance/installation piece “small comfort”. I was looking for fabrics in black, for both the outside and the inside of the bag. I spent a good deal of the train journey researching “moire silk” as that was one of the materials mentioned in the advertisement for the bag. I’d already made up a pattern for the bag on Thursday and managed to get the basic measurements from the same advertisement (which stated the bag was 17.5 inches in length).
And then, on the train, I got sidetracked into looking at other possible vintage fabrics, for quite some time, but I was intuitively sure of what I wanted. Something that definitely said mourning to me. But also something with texture. And in natural fabrics. Also, as I envision myself all in black, I wanted the fabrics of my skirt and blouse and bag to have very particular variations in texture and weight.
I’d also found out that morning that the Alexander McQueen show at the V & A was opening on the Saturday and that every single day was completely Sold Out.I was devastated to say the least. But I’m not so easily put off, and so my first mission of the day was to go to the V & A and become a member. Members get into the shows free, with no need to pre-book.
When I got to the V & A and became a member I discovered that I could attend the Members-only preview of the show that very day.
It was mind-blowing. I am an absolute fan of Alexander McQueen (in fact Angel’s Nightie is dedicated to him, for several reasons, more of which became apparent as I walked round the show). I knew almost everyone of the pieces visually that were on show as I own and often drool over a fantastic monograph of his work, and I spend long into the night watching youtube documentaries about him and his catwalk shows; he is one of my most beloved heroes. But to see the pieces up close, just inches from my face really, was amazing. And when I got there it seemed as if his pieces were answering so many of the questions that I’d been asking myself about “Angel’s Nightie” that I had to begin making notes. Mainly on fabrics. I was learning so much walking round.
Then the music and the beauty and the affinity of it all became too overwhelming and I cried. For quite some time. it felt good , cathartic and warm. A blessed release. And a home-coming to a part of myself that I’d lost touch with.
It was so moving to be there, and the crowds were not too much and there was a sense of a shared experience; I wasn’t the only one that cried. That I found out in the bookshop afterwards. For the rest of the day I felt on a high and emotional; my floodgates were down and so were my defenses: I felt in a beautiful raw place.
During the Residency my plan is to develop and work on two different projects. One is a piece called “Angel’s Nightie”, a human sized Chrysalis-Body-bag. I’ve already written about this piece a bit on my website: www.walkintomyparlour.com
The other piece, “small comfort”, had its starting point in the fairy-tale “Wild Swans” (but it has diverged significantly since then). “Wild Swans” is about a girl who, in order to restore her eleven brothers back to their human form (they have been turned into swans) has to make eleven shirts for them. These shirts are knitted from nettles that she has to gather from graveyards at night and during this time she is not able/allowed to utter a single word. Often in fairy tales Swans are a metaphor for death. And how can she bring them back to life? Her brothers? Her men? Through this act of making.
I decided to set this piece, which I envision as a Performance/Installation, during the time of WW1. The more I researched this the more I realised that I wouldn’t be making eleven shirts out of nettle yarn or fabric but that I would be knitting, as for the Soldiers on the Front, making “comforts” for them whilst they were in the trenches.
At first, whilst looking for authentic patterns, I was frustrated by the fact that I couldn’t find a pattern for a long-sleeved knitted top. One which I could knit eleven times. Instead I found patterns for balaclavas, rifle mittens, chest protectors and so on. And then it suddenly dawned on me: The very fact of this lack of wholeness, this fragmentation was like a metaphor for the explosion and mutilation, the blowing apart and scattering of the human body into separate body parts across a muddy field. And so “small comfort” consists of knitting: 11 Balaclavas, 11 Chest protectors, 11 Body belts, 22 Trench hoses/long socks, 22 sleeves and 22 rifle mittens. Not in nettle. And not in Khaki or any kind of army colour, but in white. White for Peace.
It’s already two weeks into my three month residency at the Curious Projects Space in Eastbourne, and if I am to write a blog about my experiences I’d better start sooner rather than later.
I wanted to begin by introducing myself. I’m Alice Lunt and have been making work for twenty-something years. I studied Sculpture at Brighton, graduating in 1993 with a First. During my student years I began making site-specific installations and one-to-one performances in alternative spaces.
After my Degree I moved back to London and completed an MA at Chelsea. This was a problematic year for me on many levels and I became disenchanted/confused/lost. The years that followed I would term “the Wilderness years”, a time in which I made work only sporadically. From 2000 onwards I began to concentrate on the Live art aspect of my work and was again working with momentum, when in2005 I became pregnant with my first child and chose to concentrate on being a Mother to her. My art practice up to that point had been implicitly concerned with the Mother-Child relationship in particular and with other interpersonal relationships behind closed doors and in the name of love, in general.
I withdrew to Brighton and immersed myself in family life and it wasn’t until the miscarriage of my third child and the break-down of my marriage that I began to make work again. I have to admit, pain inspires me like nothing else.
So, my work is still about that pain found in human relationships when we profess to “love”, to “care for”. Not necessarily in an explicit way. Nor is the rage and disappointment for-grounded in the work; rather it runs like an undercurrent through it; both in the way I handle objects and materials and in the kinds of one-to-one encounters I choose to initiate in my performances. I am interested in the oscillation between violence and tenderness that occurs in intimacy, in interaction with others and with things-as-metaphors-for-others-and-self.
Curious Projects opened affordable studios for artists in Eastbourne in January 2015. More than just working spaces, we aim to create a platform for fostering collaboration, encouraging mutual support, and the cross-pollination of ideas across artistic disciplines.
As part of this aspiration, one of the studios is kept as a temporary residency space in which selected artists at any stage of their careers will come to work on a specific project for a short period of time. Their working process will be documented and kept as an archive of their time at Curious Projects; and their work will culminate in a well-publicised exhibition marking the end of the residency. We hope that this format will be useful in providing focus and a framework for artists interested in making their work and working process more public. We are particularly keen to support work that could provide fuel for discussions on the interplay (or perhaps disjunction) between making and thinking.
Alice Lunt (http://walkintomyparlour.com) is the first artist in residence at Curious Projects and we look forward to following the development of her work in the space.
http://www.curious-projects.co.uk
