Tag Archives: research

Blossom & Thorn project launch

Posted in Community, My work, research by

I’ve had a rather hard winter so far, but a small beacon of joy has been the success of a project application to work with the National Forest on an arts project about hedges. I’ve been pretty obsessed with hedges for a long time but since moving to the edges of a town in 2021 and walking along hedgerows pretty much every day, they have started to creep into my creative consciousness, not just my environmental consciousness.

Blossom & Thorn, a hedgerow homage for the National Forest

An exploration of the extraordinary and humble hedgerows of the National Forest with artist Ruth Singer. Over the coming months, Ruth & a team of volunteers will be meeting with hedges along the National Forest Way and sharing their stories. From this gathering of hedge learning from old maps, from observation and emotional connection, Ruth will create an artwork to be shared within an ancient hedge. 

This project gives me the opportunity to explore some of the hedges along the 75 miles of the National Forest Way, a long distance footpath starting about mile from my home and rambling across the National Forest in Leicestershire, Derbyshire and Staffordshire I will also be working with volunteers to walk sections of the Way and report back to me on any hedges they find, and their condition. I will collate all these hedge stories into an artwork which I hope to present at an event in the summer (tbc). If you would like to get involved please let me know using the contact form below.

I’ll be leading a guided walk on Saturday 29th April in Leicestershire and tickets for that will be available soon.

Find out More

The project page is here

Keep up to date with my projects and activities through my email list Studio Stories. You can sign up for free here.

By clicking submit, you agree to share your email address with the site owner and Mailchimp to receive marketing, updates, and other emails from the site owner. Use the unsubscribe link in those emails to opt out at any time.

Processing…
Success! You're on the list.

Stitches That Speak Symposium

Posted in Art Textiles, History, Inspiration, My work, Narrative Threads, research, talks, Textile History by

On 20th April I’m giving a talk for a symposium at De Montfort University, Leicester. The programme is full of fascinating talks and presentations about biographies through objects. My presentation description is below. The event is free and all are welcome.

Emotional Repair: personal stories in cloth and stitch

My artist practice is entirely tied up with my first career in museums. Since my Museum Studies MA 25 years ago, I have been intrigued by our reverence for objects and the power of objects both to fascinate us and to embody stories. This has become a fundamental part of my research-led textile practice, in which I often work with historic garments as source or material. My work stems from my museum training of exploring objects from different angles and my passion for textiles and the stories we create around them. My artistic practice is counterpoint to museum practice by considering irreparable textiles as valuable. My work with old cloth is a thoughtful and considered interpretation of conservation and preservation methodologies and practices.

In this paper I plan to present two bodies of work which come from the same core interest in how cloth holds life stories.
Garment Ghosts is an ongoing body of work created from badly damaged and irreparable antique clothing, to which I give new life by remaking. I unpick clothing and textiles beyond repair and the fragmentary cloth is brought back to life through trapping the disintegrating garment between transparent layers, keeping the outline of the piece but also opening up seam allowances and pleats to take the fabric back to its original form.

Imprint is a commission to make a new piece of work inspired by a family textile collection, where I was asked to preserve the garments intact which presented me with an intriguing challenge of working with a textile collection without cutting anything. Unlike much of my work using garments divorced from their humans, I had a clear provenance and stories to go with these pieces. I created an archive box of small pieces telling stories of damage, use, fragility and human experience.

Register on Eventbrite

Criminal Quilts talk at Staffordshire History Day

Posted in Criminal Quilts by

I’m delighted to be one of the Keynote speakers at this years’ Staffordshire History Day on Saturday 11th May.

I’ll be talking about the research behind my Criminal Quilts project in detail and sharing some of the many intriguing and troubling stories we unearthed during the research.

Criminal Quilts

Criminal Quilts research – October 2017

Posted in Criminal Quilts, My work, Residencies by

The research and development phase of Criminal Quilts is now well underway. I have been spending time in residence at Staffordshire Record Office exploring archives and finding out what resources I have to explore during this project and planning what the workshops for volunteers and participants will involve.

Stafford Prison photograph albums from the late 19th and early 20th century form the basis of the entire project. For several years I have been creating work around a handful of photographs of women with no additional information about them at all. One of the aims of this new funded research project is to explore the full collection of photograph albums and trace stories through the records.

There are 10 different albums dating from 1877 to 1915 which gives me a broad window of exploration beyond the Victorian and well into the 21st century. I have begun by cataloguing the women who appear in the photographs. The albums just contain photos, and in a couple of cases, indexed pages of named but very little detail. Each image is marked with the prisoner’s name, a date (of photograph, I assume) and a number. In this first phase I am making lists of all the women (about 10-15% of the total in each album I estimate) and noting name, date, number, approximate age and a detailed description of the photograph. I’ll then be able to cross reference between the albums to see who features more than once and then find out more about them via the written documents which I have yet to explore.

Already I can see women who appear several times over the years. I have identified prison uniforms and what I suspect is prison-issue clothing. There’s also a very clear timeline of fashion, particularly in hats which almost all of the women are wearing. These photographs are known to be a rare record of working class women’s clothing but I am already realising it is going to be difficult to be sure what is prison issue and what is personal property, particularly in the later images. There are also some really lovely shawls appearing which may well inspired new work.

I have a lot of additional research to do about the background to prison identification photography, about prison uniforms and a lot of cross referencing to fashion history in general before I can draw any conclusions about what their clothing says.

The albums themselves are impressive and inspiring objects with marbled endpapers, damaged spines and hand written text. I’ll be exploring the albums in more detail in the next post.

 

There are still spaces for volunteers to work with me on this project during 2018. Find out more here.

Criminal Quilts exhibition is available for touring in 2019 onwards.

Images of archive material courtesy of Staffordshire Record Office. Project funded by Arts Council England with Staffordshire County Council.

 

SaveSave

Exploring DNA – Artist in Residence

Posted in Collaborations, DNA, Residencies by

Gillian and I spent our first full day at work as Artists in Residence at Leicester University Department of Genetics this week spending time observing in labs and extracting the DNA from a banana preparation to testing our own DNA later this week. For the next few weeks were are absorbing, observing, investigating, learning and getting to know the department as well as planning all the other parts of our project including schools project and exhibition.

For me it is a visual and intellectual feast, I’m finding the details of the labs fascinating and so completely new it is somewhat mind-blowing. The joy of this research stage is there’s no pressure to decide what the finished work might be and it’s great to bounce ideas around with both academic staff and of course with Gillian as we begin to scope out how we are going to approach our creative work.

 

I’m working on a new sketchbook with no fixed aim or direction yet which is very liberating. I am learning – fast- about the very basics of DNA and genetics, starting from knowing pretty much nothing, having not studied any science for 25 years! I’m overwhelmed by the generosity and support from the academic staff already and the enthusiasm shown for what must seem a pretty strange project to them.

 

Exploring DNA

Posted in career, Collaborations, Inspiration by

Following on from our studio session exploring stains a couple of weeks ago, Gillian & I have started work on a new research and development project, inspired DNA using found objects as our source material. Each object will be changed, developed and combined with other altered objects to create a sequence of interactions and combinations.

 

We are working on a funding application to take this much further but for now we are experimenting with visual representations of DNA through generations. The creative part is fantastic but I realise my knowledge of DNA and biochemistry is a bit sparse! I have a lot to learn and lots of ideas to explore, which is very exciting.