Fantastically Inspiring Day at the ‘Matter of Material’ symposium, Turner Contemporary, Margate
Below I am posting my abstract from the Matter of Material Symposium which I took part in recently. The symposium, put together by UCA’s Prof. Lesley Millar accompanied the exhibition Entangled: Threads & Making, which has just finished at the Turner Contemporary. It was a fantastically stimulating day, I really enjoyed the other speaker’s presentation’s, especially hearing from Freddie Robins in conversation with Day+Gluckman and seeing Maxine Bristow’s inspiring new work.
Looking beyond the warp and weft: unpicking latent narratives in clothing.
The proposed paper presents my on-going practice in which I explore and reveal perceived memory and experience imbued in worn clothing, specifically through the recent piece of work Łódź Blouse Trilogy.
In this work, I undertook a series of interventions on blouses to reveal dormant and latent matter; details from a single photographic image of a tea party in Poland’s Lodz Ghetto. Discovering Henryk` Ross’s photographic work many years ago, I have been haunted by this photograph. Further investigation disclosed how Ross hid (buried) his collection of images, returning years later to unearth them.
Łódź Blouse Trilogy and related work addresses the use of textiles, cloth and clothing as a rich landscape for expression; a vehicle to explore and communicate complex ideas within a fine art context. And seeks to present knowledge and provoke thinking on a series of levels, from craft skills to contemporary scientific and psychological thinking.
We are intimately familiar with the physicality and materiality of clothing. Thus, this work offers a ‘safe’ fluid entry point to discuss and stimulate contemplation around inherited memory; biological and metaphorical transference; personal recall and repression; our sense of self and the ability of cloth and clothes to hold and translate human experience.
In today’s Forensic landscape, textiles play a powerful contributing role in developing narrative from the crime scene. In ‘A Garment in the Dock…’ Kitty Hauser talks about the FBI’s use of unique ridges and valleys’ in worn denim jeans to identify US bank robbers. This research showed that despite the ubiquity of jeans, each pair has individual identifying characteristics and highlights the relationship between garment and wearer.
Fascinated with the creative implications of what is left behind in the clothes we wear, and supported by my experience of working with Alison Fendly at the FSS, I have sought to make visible a personal response. The use of garment construction/deconstruction, digital embroidery and dye-sublimation printing have made this work manifest.
Shelly Goldsmith
References
-A Garment int he dock: or, how the FBI illuminated the prehistory of a pair of denim jeans -Kitty Hauser
– ‘A Party in the Łódź Ghetto’ by Henryk Ross is used with special permission from the Museum and At Gallery of Ontario
-Alison Fendly – Senior Biologist at the Forensic Science Service
– Lodz Blouse Trilogy – UCA Canterbury , Nov 2016-Jan 2017
Łódź Blouse Trilogy- detail Image: Sam Chick
—-
I will be speaking at the Matter of Material Symposium, which accompanies the exhibition Entangled: Threads & Making
Keynote Speakers:
Catherine Harper is Professor of Textiles and Deputy Vice-Chancellor of University of Chichester. Editor-in-Chief of the Routledge journal TEXTILE: Cloth & Culture, she is also editor of and contributor to the four-volume Textiles: Critical and Primary Sources (Bloomsbury 2012) and author of a monograph, Intersex (Berg, 2007). She has published several chapters and scholarly articles, most recently in O’Brien and Moran’s Love Objects and Taylor & Francis’ Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture. A visual artist originally, Catherine’s sculpture, performance and public arts practice has been exhibited in UK and Ireland, the US and Canada, Russia, France, Germany, Finland and Japan.
Freddie Robins is an artist who challenges our perception of knitting as craft. Her work is internationally renowned, her practice crossing the boundaries of art, design and craft. She lives and works in Essex and London. She studied at Middlesex Polytechnic (1984-87) and the Royal College of Art (1987-89) where she is now Senior Tutor and Reader in Textiles.
Other speakers include:
Dr. Beverly Ayling-Smith: The bedsheet – from linen cupboard to art gallery.
Dr. Maxine Bristow: Medium (un)specificity as material agency – the productive indeterminacy of matter/material.
Dr. Catherine Dormor: The Event of a Stitch.
Shelly Goldsmith: Looking beyond the warp and weft: unpicking latent narratives in clothing.
Partners:
Entangled: Threads & Making
Entangled: Threads & Making is a major exhibition of sculpture, installation, tapestry, textiles and jewellery from the early 20th century to the present day. It features over 40 international female artists who expand the possibilities of embroidery, weaving, sewing and wood carving, often incorporating unexpected materials such as plants, clothing, hair and bird quills.
Entangled: Threads & Making is curated by writer and critic Karen Wright, with Turner Contemporary. Wright became fascinated by the making processes she saw first-hand on the many studio visits she did with artists for her ‘In the Studio’ column for the Independent. The idea for Entangled: Threads & Making evolved out of these visits, in particular one with renowned American artist Kiki Smith who was working on her epic tapestry Sky (2012), included in the exhibition.
The exhibition brings together artists from different generations and cultures who challenge established categories of craft, design and fine art, and who share a fascination with the handmade and the processes of making itself.
A new publication accompanies the exhibition, with essays and interviews by Ann Coxon, Stina Högkvist, Siri Hustvedt, Kathryn Lloyd, Rosa Martínez, Marit Paasche, Frances Morris and Karen Wright. Available from the Turner Contemporary shop.
No comments yet.