Back to the ginghammy thinghammy…
I had originally intended that any text I wrote/stitched on this would be all over it. Lots.
But in the end, didn’t.
I attended a book launch/talk at the Ikon gallery in Birmingham by Henry Rogers (with contributor Jacqueline Taylor) who has edited and written a lovely little book entitled “I see what you’re saying: The materialisation of words in contemporary art”
I must confess, Henry, I’ve not read it properly, but dipped in and out, here and there, it’s been a busy week… anyway… It has made me mindful about how I use my text. I hesitate to use the word cautious, as that’s never really been a problem of mine. (Lazy, yes, cautious, no).
Words are powerful things, and I trot them out here, willy nilly, verbal diarrhoea as they say. I love them enough though, to be able to spell diarrhoea without looking it up.
On my textiles though, they are precious things, they are thoughts, fleeting, captured and pinned down, an essence distilled. Each word is (usually) originally written, by hand, on the item in question, flowing, joined up, occasionally illegible, as my handwriting is prone to being. The hand stitching process is slow, a long word like diarrhoea could take an hour to stitch. During this time, the word disappears, I trust in my line, and stitch it. Meaning for me seems to deepen as I spend this time contemplating it, the next word, the context, the garment, and the point at which the garment becomes something else. It could still be worn. But is it now something else? I like my work to be touched, which, in a gallery situation is tricky. (Jacqueline, in her reading, described her feelings about touching art in galleries.) By continuing to touch it once it has become art, means that it remains garment as well as art… maybe.
The words “I’m a good girl, I am” are emphatic, ironic, perhaps funny, with a hint of Barbara Windsor about them. “All fixed now” equally emphatic, but clearly untrue. The tears and holes might be prettier, but they are still there, and in fact, now more obvious than if I had left well alone.
So now I am drawn to reading about semiotics. Goodness knows where that will lead me.
