Work In Progress: 'Traveller' on show at Saltaire Art Trail 25-27 May

Traveller 2019 

This piece will be on display at Saltaire Mill in Yorkshire Art Trail between Sat 25 - Mon 27 May 2019.

You can check out other projects on instagram and Youtube.  Alternatively you can see other textile work here and my biography here.

Saltaire Arts Trail is a community arts event held annually on the late May Bank Holiday weekend. It offers an imaginative visual arts programme, celebrating the village’s rich heritage which surrounds Salts Mill.

The Arts Trail uses imaginative venues -  public buildings, the homes of Saltaire residents and outdoor spaces around Saltaire, to display visual art outside of traditional settings, as well as delivering new exhibitions and commissions.

This video shows how I created the piece:

 The piece is called Traveller and I am in the process of developing a wider series for this work. 

Traveller

 2019 

The central figure is walking alone in an abstract landscape. The figure’s form is incomplete disjointed and in part translucent. The figure is protected within an atmospheric diving suit walking across an open plane above sea level. The person is encased in the suit and detached from their surroundings; unable to connect. The person is not submerged, but they cannot breathe freely. The piece uses visual prompts for the viewer to interpret the work on their own terms. Is the traveller a Nomad or explorer? Are they aimless or pursuing a direction of their choice?

How Traveller was Constructed

The supporting images give a flavour of the process of this piece in development. I started with brainstorming words associated with themes of loneliness and isolation. These words have then informed primary and secondary image sources which become symbols within my work. The aim is for the images to be open to interpretation and help the viewer explore their feelings and emotions.

 

I'm aiming to develop a new series of work which is going to be titled Odyssey.

For now, here is a short summary of how Traveler was developed:

 I started by exploring abstract forms using inks and paper. I'm aiming to build towards a cohesive series of work. Therefor I wanted all the images to be rooted in the same initial process although all the images will be varied and different.

 Here is a selection of the images from my sketch book going through that process.

 I wanted all the images to be loose, chaotic and fluid. The tension however has been finding a pattern and relationship between these images.

These images were then scanned together and reassembled in a collage format through an editing software called Krita (which is like Photoshop but free!)

I then combined several of the edited pages from my sketch book to form a new composition. I have used this process in an aim to bring symmetry to the composition of work and the series overall. I am attempting to create a sense of balance with the individual image but also I am mindful about how the works will work together as a cohesive series.

 I explored psychological descriptions of isolation and loneliness and brain stormed the issues surrounding patterns of behaviour.

From these key ideas I then identified words I felt could be used to associate those thoughts and feelings

I used pinterest to collect lots of images that aligned to the theme of isolation and loneliness.

I want to create individual symbols which people can identify their own emotions. Although a person may not be able to describe initially how or why they identify with a piece I wanted the work to evoke an atmosphere and feeling that could resonate with them.

I developed the piece traveler as I was interested in the relationship of someone feeling lost, running away, or running towards something unidentified. I used the image of a deep sea diver as someone who explores unknown terrain but is also very cut off from everything around them.

 I am interested in art theory and took influence from Wilhelm Worringer (1881-1965) Abstraction and Empathy. The essay was written as a doctoral thesis in 1906 which was subtitled 'A Contribution to the Psychology of Style'. I was struck by some of the passages in the essay which resonated with the theme I have been exploring and trying to capture.  I wanted to create an abstract image which has symbolic anchors to help guide the viewer into certain directions of thought. There were two sections in this essay that stood out to me:

'Not that primitive man sought more urgently for regularity in nature, or experienced regularity in it more intensely; just the reverse: It is because he stands so lost and spiritually helpless amidst the things of the external workd. because he experiences only obscurity and caprice in the inter-connection and flux of the phenomena of the external world, that the urge is so strong in him to divest the things of the external world of their caprice and obscurity in the world-picture and to impart to them a value of necessity and a value of regularity. '

'...In the urge to abstraction the intensity of the self-alienative impulse is... not characterized, as in the need for empathy, by an urge to alienate oneself from individual being, but as an urge to seek deliverance from the fortuitousness of humanity as a whole, from the seeming arbitrariness of organic existence in general, in the contemplation of something necessary and irrefragable. [...] Popular usage speaks with striking accuracy of 'losing oneself' in the contemplation of a work of art.'

(sources taken from Art in Theory Harrison and Wood 1992)

The work needed to be open to interpretation enough so that any person can project their emotions onto the scene they are observing.  I want the place to feel unknown and with a tension without appearing overly threatening or chaotic. 

Once I had an image I was satisfied with, I edited the piece so that it could be printed onto fabric. I chose a printer called Contrado because they have a fabric called 'Scroll Paper Fabric'  ID:1963 which is really good at holding the ink without bleeding or fading and flexible enough to work without tearing the print itself.

 

Once I had the image from the printers the sewing into the piece took roughly three months to complete. Below is a step by step so you can see how it was all put together!

I'm doing an artist talk in Bristol! LGBT+ Liberation & the Politics of Textiles

Hello!

I'm doing an artist talk in Bristol which is pretty exciting. I'm going to be discussing the Same Sex Marriage Quilt which is on display at the Bowers Gallery in Bristol. For those who have followed this blog a little while will know I did this project back in 2015 so its great to have it back out on display and talk about the work. If you want to know more click on the labels textiles or equality quilt and you'll see my previous posts about the project

If you don't know about the project here is a little more detail about it. If you're local to Bristol please come a long and say I would would love to meet you!

A community quilt project which celebrates the 396 Members of Parliament (MPs) that voted in favour of same sex marriage bill 2013. The quilt is a political map with all 650 MPs constituencies.  He has been working with a range of venues and groups to get the public involved in the project. These include People's History Museum, LGBT Youth North West, Museum of Liverpool, FACT, The 1st National Festival of LGBT History, Homotopia, Unity Theatre and Schools Out. 

I worked with different groups to get the public to decorate hand drawn portraits of the 396 MPs that voted in support of the same sex marriage bill. The portraits have been collected together to form a political map of the UK and all the MPs constituencies. There were also 254 MPs that did not vote for the bill, for those gaps in the map people were asked to write messages of hope towards a more equal and accepting future.  

The project was made possible through successfully competing against 12 finalists for one of three mirco-residencies with People's History Museum in 2014. The project continued being supported through Homotopia's artist development scheme Queercore. During Homtopia’s 2014 Festival Unity theatre and Museum of Liverpool hosted sessions for the public to decorate the hand drawn images. The project engaged with community groups until all 396 contributions were decorated. From design to construction the project took two years to create. The quilt is 4 metres tall by 3.5 metres wide and was constructed with the support of Digetex and Source Unknown.


#Equalityquilt: Wythenshawe's WYnotLGBTQ

I was able to get together with WYnotLGBTQ a youth group in Wythenshawe for lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans* young people.

 They were a fantastically creative group, they all contributed towards the #equalityquilt project which I was really pleased with.

 Here are a couple of pictures from the session which will be on display during People’s History Museum mircoresidency (26^th August – 30^th August) for visitors to take a look at, be inspired by and make their own contributions.

 Remember if you’re far away from Manchester and you want me to make a contribution all you need to do is tweet #equalityquilt with your message or leave a comment here and I’ll make a contribution for you and add it to the quilt!

I’d love to get some international messages if I can so please do add your own message of what you’d like to see in a more hopeful, tolerant and equal society in future and I’ll add it and send you a picture of what I’ve done!

There was a little surprise for as well. When we were talking together two of the people in the session showed me their tattoos of the equality symbol on person has it on the inside of their finger and the other on their wrist which I thought was brilliant. 

 So these two tattoos have to be incorporated into the quilt as well!

Equality Quilt Project, visit to People's History Museum Archive! Outrage, Marches and the suffragettes

I had the pleasure of going to People’s History Archive, anyone can arrange a visit and they have this huge hidden collection that isn’t visible in the displays within the museum.

 

 I was interested in exploring their collection of LGBT articles to see if I could incorporate any of the materials into the final quilt. I was taken to their archive at 103 Princess Street in a beautiful 18^th century building situated just off Canal Street.

 I was given a tour by Harriet Richardson, Curatorial Assistant (Collections) and she retrieved a small box from their substantially larger collection.



The box contained various images from previous pride events in the 1980s and campaign material from OUTRAGE! in the 1990s. 

If felt like a privilege to be handling these unusual examples and glimpsing insights to trove of LGBT history.

 

I spent my time reading through the records and exploring the images. I’ll be using some quotes from their text and including these images to include to act as a reminder of how far we have come in securing our human rights and acknowledge the people who spoke out against discrimination and acted boldly enough to stand up for their rights.

 There was also this reoccurring article of ‘gayest songs ever’ so I’m going to down load them for the residency an play them during the workshops for people who attend as a homage to their choices.

Looking through the archive made me further appreciate what has happened as I was growing up. I was aware of my sexuality changing from around the time I was twelve to thirteen.  Homophobia was very much alive and caught up with me personally by the time I was fifteen to sixteen.

 

Seeing this image of Brian Dowling brought a lot of this time back to me.  In the first season Anna Nolan (2000) was an out Lesbian nun who came second in the competition, she was funny, warm to others and didn’t take the game show too seriously. It was the second season of big brother (2001) when Brian was on big brother and I was doing my GCSEs he had come out to his parents just two weeks before going on to the show. I can remember my mother saying ’how didn’t they know he was gay?’  

Then she awkwardly trailed off without looking at me. My family loved Brian during the series and were clearly very accepting of his sexuality and through watching their reaction to him, their positive attitude gave me the confidence to come out myself. It seems strange now that this was over ten years ago (making it history officially!) his appearance on Big Brother was life changing for me, it enabled me to become open about who I am and I’ve never looked back. So thanks Brian Dowling J

  

  Last year I had done an interview with Peter Tatchell as part of a Heritage Lottery project with LGBT youth North West.  So I was aware of his campaigns but it felt like a real privilege to connect with this part of history through the materials he used to promote his campaigns.



It wasn’t until I was in college that I wasn’t aware of things like section 28 and I didn’t even know outrage had been lobbying for section 25 until reading through these pamphlets!

So Section 25(5) of the Aliens Control Act 96 of 1991, which was declared unconstitutional in 1999.  In the 1999 case Constitutional Court of South Africa - National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality and Others v. Minister of Home Affairs and Others: protected status of same-sex couples.  It was found that Section 25(5) failed to give persons, who were partners in permanent same-sex life partnerships, the benefits it extended to "spouses" under this section.The Court ruled that this section discriminated unfairly against gays and lesbians on the intersecting and overlapping grounds of sexual orientation and marital status and seriously limited their equality rights and their right to dignity.  It did so in a way which was not reasonable and justifiable in an open and democratic society based on human dignity, equality and freedom. 


I really like these six T-shirt designs; a mission for me will be to find one of these! I really enjoyed looking at these old photos to see the hair and clothing styles with details of their banners and badges is brilliant!

Here are some more pictures of the awesome people who stood up for what they believe in a challenged law and discriminating societal norms. 

I also was able to look at the collection of materials for the suffragettes. What I found particularly interesting was this beautiful and delegate handmade flower which was sold to generate support for their cause.

 If you’re interested in women’s history I recommend you check out People’s History Museum website.

 I also got absorbed in going through the a hardbound collection of newspaper articles from 'Votes for Women'. There was a jarring clash in contrast between the politically charged articles and all the women’s fashion adverts for its time. I highly recommend going to the collection to have a read its fascinating!