- Venue
- Bargate Monument Gallery
- Location
- South East England
In this, her first solo exhibition, Sarah Filmer (and 500+ others) has created ‘Blue Jumper’. It is a collaborative, community knitting project inspired by a chance encounter when she saw someone wearing her mother’s blue jumper. A jumper she had previously donated to charity following her mother’s death. She realised that we can all continue on in unexpected ways – perhaps like ripples on water.
The jumper therefore isn’t a finished piece; it continues as active and participatory in the gallery space. Each visitor to the exhibition is asked ‘Are you a knitter? Would you like to contribute to the work?’ If you choose to participate in the work, you can select wool and needles; the only ‘rules’ are that you must use blue yarn and you must work directly onto the piece. So you sit on a chair or on the floor and become part of the work (I was contributor No. 512). If you don’t know how to knit, that isn’t a barrier as the artist will guide you through the basics.
The work loops and laces its way across the gallery space – constantly changing as work is added. The barrier between work and audience is non-existent as you walk around and through it. It is also performance art of a kind where each participant becomes part of the work and no longer observer but the observed.
The work also raises questions about community. What do we mean by community today? Is it the people we work with, live close to, meet at regular places? Do we make our own communities? What links a community? 500 (and growing) people – young, old, male, female – are connected to this work and to each other – part of Blue Jumper’s community.
The work is accompanied by a video piece and each contributor is invited to write a small card about their connection with, thoughts about or experiences of knitting, and their name will be added to the wall. All contributors’ names are linked in one continuous ‘loopy’ line encircling the work.
My guess is that this work will ‘ripple on’ in other ways and other forms, enlarging the community it has started for some time to come.
