Fabric and sewing have been an important and ever present source of creativity throughout my life. My mum was always making and mending and going to choose and buy fabrics with her was always a great adventure. I want to make another work using fabric and sewing and combining that with my affinity with words.
Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin are two of the artists that featured in my dissertation, both made use of fabric and sewing in some of their art works.
Here are some examples from Louise Bourgeois:
Louise Bourgeois: Untitled (2003)
Media: Fabric
Dimensions: 28.6 x 37.5cm
Location: Fondazione Vedova, Venice
Louise Bourgeois: Untitled: (2006)
Media: Fabric with ink and fabric collage
Dimensions: 56.1 x 66.6cm
Location: Fondazione Vedova, Venice
Louise Bourgeois: Untitled: (2002)
Media: Woven fabric
Dimensions: 27.3 x 21.6cm
Location: Fondazione Vedova, Venice
Louise Bourgeois: Untitled: (2006)
Media: Fabric
Dimensions: 38.7 x 48.6cm
Location: Fondazione Vedova, Venice
Louise Bourgeois: Untitled: ( 2005)
Media: Fabric
Dimensions: 27.9 x 36.8cm
Location: Fondazione Vedova, Venice
These designs remind me of quilts and spiders webs.
Louise Bourgeois was a life-long hoarder of fabrics, as am I. She collected clothes, tablecloths napkins and bed linen which she would cut up and re-use. Having been a seamstress and quilt maker for many years, I can truly identify with this process. Louise Bourgeois had this to say about her sewing:
“I always had the fear of being separated and abandoned. The sewing is my attempt to keep thing together and make things whole.” ( Louise Bourgeois as quoted on the Hauser & Wirth website)
Available at:
http://www.hauserwirth.com/exhibitions/743/louise-bourgeois-the-fabric-works/view/
And from Tracey Emin:
Tracey Emin: Automatic Orgasm: (2001)
Media: Appliqued blanket
Dimensions: 263 x 214cm
Location: White Cube
Image courtesy of White Cube
Photo taken by Stephen White
Image available at:
http://www.saatchigallery.com/aipe/tracey_emin.htm
Tracey Emin: I Do not Expect: ( 2002)
Media: Appliqued blanket
Dimensions: 264.16 x 184.8cm
Location: Private Collection
Image courtesy of Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia
Image available at:
Tracey Emin: Contamination of the Soul: (2008)
Media: Appliqued Blanket
Dimensions: 98.62 x 78.35
Location: Unknown
Image available at:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/0d24ee26-da7d-11e2-8062-00144feab7de.html#axzz3TgIiZICx
Emin takes a traditional craft and elevates it to the status of Fine Art.
Like the late Louise Bourgeois – with whom she worked to create 16 prints that will be shown in New York this September – Emin employs the lightness of traditional “women’s crafts”, like sewing, to explore what Bourgeois classed as the volcanic unconscious which we only ever encounter in parts:
“That’s why I use a lot of embroidery,” Emin explains. “I take this craft but I don’t treat it like a craft, but like high art. I didn’t know who Louise Bourgeois was until 1996. I had started on my own trajectory and I was so amazed when I came across her.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/tracey-emin-craft-work-2004036.html
I am currently working around the hidden aspect of child abuse. In the vast majority of cases that are only now coming to light the victims have kept silent about what happened to them for many years, through reasons of guilt, shame, or fear of not being believed.
