Maxine Bristow

Maxine Bristow

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Contents Textures of Memory, the Poetics of Cloth

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(Unlimited), Repetition and Change in Contemporary Craft

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Jerwood Applied Arts Prize: Textiles 2002 21 Through the Surface: Collaborating Textile Artists from Britain and Japan

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Reveal: Nottingham’s Contemporary Textiles 39 Business as Usual 47 Sensual Austerity, Bolton 53 Sensual Austerity, Sleaford 61 Unbound 69 Cloth and Culture NOW 73 Component configuration 14211-CH22LB 93 Bite-Size: Miniature Textiles from Japan and the UK

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Z-depth buffer: component configuration 261111-E84QN

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Component (re)configuration 111211-CH22LB 107 Transformations: component configuration 12712-IP331BT 111 Component (re)configuration 121012-CH22LB 121 Concordance: component configuration 26713-M156ER 131 Component (re)configuration 23913-CH22LB 151 Cloth and Memory {2}: component configuration 23913-CH22LB

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Textures of Memory, the Poetics of Cloth

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Group touring exhibition curated by Pennina Barnett and Pamela Johnson Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham, 18 Sept – 30 Oct 1999 Pitshanger Manor & Gallery, London, 14 Jan – 20 Feb 2000 Piece Hall, Halifax, 11 March – 30 April 2000 Midland Arts Centre, Birmingham, 30 Sept – 12 Nov 2000 Textures of Memory, the Poetics of Cloth proposes cloth as a poetic language.

Through its vocabulary – fold, drape, stretch, Stein and tear – it signifies an emotional range from intimacy, comfort and protection, to more disquieting state of restriction, fragility, loss and impermanence. A 40 page full colour catalogue accompanied the exhibition and included the essays ‘Acts of memory’ by Pamela Johnson and ‘Folds, fragments, surfaces: towards a poetics of cloth’ by Pennina Barnett.

Artists include: Polly Binns, Caroline Broadhead, Alicia Felberbaum, Marianne Ryan, Verdi Yahooda, Anne Wilsonv Work details: Title:

3 x 19: Intersecting a Seam

Date:

1999

Dimensions:

Overall dimensions: H163cm x W418cm

(3 x 124cm + 2 gaps of 23cm approx.)

Individual pieces: H163cm x W124cm

Materials:

Linen, cotton, gesso

Process:

Quilting, bound buttonholes, hand and machine stitch

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(Un) Limited Repetition and Change in International Contemporary Craft

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Group exhibition curated by Emmanuel Cooper Crafts Council, London 1 April – 6 June 1999 (Un)Limited, Repetition and Change in International Contemporary Craft explores repetition and individuality in the world of the handmade. The title suggests both freedom and borders and is a play on the ‘limited edition’. The exhibition looks at the way ideas are explored through closely related objects and through the theme of variation. It touches on topical questions such as individuality and duplication, the relationship of handmade objects to mass production, and the role of the unique artwork. The exhibition represents ten international artists and makers, who work in series, multiples and family forms, looking at the way these makers engage with ideas as well as material and process, extending the frame of reference for ceramics, textiles and metal Work details: Square Correlation No.’s 1-5 Date:

1999

Dimensions:

Overall dimensions: H74cm x W870cm

(5 x 150cm + 4 gaps of 30cm approx.)

Individual pieces: H74cm x W150cm

Materials:

Wool, linen, cotton, fleece fabric, hair canvas, gesso

Process:

Quilting, bound buttonholes, hand and machine stitch

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Jerwood Applied Arts Prize 2002 Textiles

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Group touring exhibition: Crafts Council, London, 19 Sept – 3 Nov 2002 Salford Museum and Art Gallery, 11 Jan – 2 March 2003 Crafts Council of Ireland, Kilkenny, 8 March – 4 May 2003 Ulster Museum, Belfast, 10 May – 6 July 2003 Ettrick Riverside, Selkirk, 5 Sept – 31 October 2003 ‘The Jerwood Applied Arts Prize: Textile 2002 celebrates excellence and originality in contemporary textiles made by individuals in the UK, with the purpose of encouraging its appreciation, understanding and collection. Artists are selected on the basis of those who have made the most significant contribution to contemporary textiles, demonstrating commitment, excellence and innovation in work made over the past five years’. (Jerwood Textile Prize publicity material).

Artists include: Rowena Dring, Shelly Goldsmith, Shizuko Kimura, Lauren Moriarty, Clio Padovani, Freddie Robbins, Sarah Taylor.

A 25 page full colour catalogue accompanied the exhibition. ISBN: 1-90371307-2

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Project overview: Selection for the Jerwood Prize (made on the basis of ‘those who have made the most significant contribution to contemporary textiles, over the past five years’) provided me with the opportunity to look back and consolidate research which had been largely manifest in what had become my signature ‘bag’ forms. It also provided the opportunity to look forward and explore ways in which my research interests could be extended and realised through other forms and processes.

The ‘bag’ pieces form part of an ongoing body of work which explores the positioning of traditional textile materials and processes within the broader realm of contemporary visual culture. Harnessing the processes, materials and accompanying discourses of needlework/plain-sewing within a minimalist aesthetic, the research exploits the critical and cultural contexts of both of these codes of practice, but through a process of exchange, aims to subvert or transcend their conventional definitions of meaning.

With reference to the debates surrounding minimalist painting, a new installation of 18 bag forms explored the possibility of larger multiples with the intention of articulating the space of the gallery and engaging the body of the viewer in a much more pronounced way.

The shift in emphasis of the ‘bag’ forms prompted the development of two new bodies of work which speculatively explored more general ideas about touch and our bodily engagement with space. The enquiry was informed by everyday features of the built environment which mediate between the body and space and instigate corporeal habits and unconscious repeated patterns of behaviour. These patterns of behaviour are echoed in the work through the repetitive processes of needlepoint (produced by my own kits and with the help of Chester Embroiderer’s Guild) and darning, which bring both a private and a feminine intervention into the public realm of architectural space.

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List of project outputs: Jerwood Applied Arts Prize 2002: Textiles.

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18 x 51 over 11.44

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Symposium presentation: Textile Vocabularies, Innovation in

Year:

2002

Practice. 29.10.03, Herriot Watt University, Scottish Borders

Dimensions:

H214cm x W 1114cm (individual bags H214cm x W51cm)

Campus, Galashiels.

Materials:

Cotton, horsehair interfacing, gesso

Process:

Quilting, bound buttonholes, hand and machine stitch

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Needlepoint: ref no.7510, 3 x 63cm surround

Year:

2001

Dimensions:

H100cm (from top of handrail to the floor) x W63cm

Column dimensions:

height of ceiling (variable) x 43.2cm sq approx

Materials:

Tapestry canvas, denim, tapestry wool, metal fixings

Process:

Needlepoint, upholstery

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Darn: ref no.648, 3 x 146 cm division

Year:

2002

Dimensions:

H100cm x W 146cm approx [space between columns variable]

Materials:

Wool, cotton thread, metal frame

Process:

Darning, upholstery

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Symposium presentation: Jerwood Applied Arts Prize 2002: Tex

tiles. Crafts Council, London, 21.10.02.

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Lecture/presentation: Salford Museum and Art Gallery, 25.02.03

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Through the Surface Collaborating Textile Artists from Britain and Japan

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Anglo-Japanese Mentoring Exchange Project and touring exhibition directed by Lesley Millar, Professor of Textile Culture, UCA: James Hockey and Foyer Galleries, University College of the Arts, Farnham, 27 Jan – 20 March 2004 Hove Museum and Art Gallery, 31 Jan – 21 March 20044 The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Art, Norwich, 6 April – 16 May 2004 Bankfield Museum, Huddersfield, and Piece Hall, Halifax, 26 June – 30 Aug 2004 Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery, 26 Sept – 21 Nov 2004 The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, 22 April 2005 – 29 May 2005 Through the Surface: Collaborating Textile Artists from Britain and Japan is an Anglo Japanese mentoring exchange project which explores points of difference and similarity within the cultures of Japan and Britain and involves collaboration between textile artists who are at different stages of career development. Documentation of the project can be found here: http://www.transitionandinfluence. com/throughthesurface/index.html A 106 full colour publication accompanied the project and included my own self authored essay ‘Material Trace-Marking’, Time and Defining Space Reflective journal entries which document the working partnership with Kyoko Nitta and the development of the work over an eight month period can be found here: http://www.transitionandinfluence.com/throughthesurface/throughthesurface. html

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Project overview: ‘Through the Surface is an Anglo Japanese mentoring exchange project which explored points of difference and similarity within the cultures of Japan and Britain and involved collaboration between textile artists who are at different stages of career development. Throughout 2003, four emerging artists from Britain and three from Japan travelled to work with seven established artists from the opposite country. The development and progress of these seven working partnerships was documented through the artist’s online Journals. The journals not only provided insights into individual research interests and working procedures, but also insights into the significance of learning journals and the nature of cross cultural reflective practice in art and design. The resulting work from the partnerships became an exhibition which attracted approximately 83,000 visitors as it toured the UK between January and December 2004. The exhibition transferred to Japan in April 2005 and was exhibited at the National Museum of Modern Art Kyoto. A conference/symposium and education programme accompanied the exhibition(s).

My involvement with the project was as one of the three established British artists/mentors and was by personal invitation by the project director Professor Lesley Millar. With its emphasis on revealing insights into process, I chose to use the project as an opportunity to ‘unpack’ the speculative new body of work that had been prompted by the Jerwood Textiles Prize and together with my partner Kyoko Nitta extend this research through an exploration of Textiles as an ambiguous boundary between self and not self and between the body and the built environment.

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List of project outputs: Through the Surface, Collaborating Textile Artists from Britain and Japan 1. Light-switch ref: 203/18 Date:

2003

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Contribution to collaborative installation produced by partner artist

Dimensions:

Height: 260cm approx (from floor to top of horizontal conduit) x

Kyoko Nitta

Width:

variable

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Individual presentation - Bankfield Museum and Art Gallery, Halifax, 17th

Materials:

White concrete, plaster, granite chippings, carborundum powder,

July 2004

tapestry wool, tapestry canvas, electrical fittings

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Joint seminar presentation with Kyoko Nitta - Creative Dialogues 2,

Process:

Casting, canvas work

Bankfield Museum and Art Gallery, Halifax, 23rd July 2004

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Individual presentation, Seika University, Japan, 19th April 2004

2. Conduit ref: 203/18

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Joint conference presentation with Kyoko Nitta - Museum of Modern Art,

Date:

2003

Kyoto, Japan, April 22nd 2005.

Dimensions:

Height: 260cm approx [from floor to top of horizontal conduit] x

Width:

variable

Materials:

Tapestry wool, tapestry canvas, cotton, electrical fittings

Process:

Canvas work, hand-stitch

3. Barrier ref : 9774-14 Date:

2003

Dimensions:

Height: 91cm x Length: 165cm x Width: 41cm

Materials:

Timber, insulator padding, cotton, felted wool, tapestry wool,

tapestry canvas, Process:

Timber construction, upholstery, canvas work, hand/machine

stitch

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Reveal: Nottingham’s Contemporary Textiles

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Group exhibition curated by Kate Stoddart Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery 17 Sept – 27 Nov 2005 In 1998 the Arts Council Lottery awarded the Contemporary Art Society £2.5 million to set up the Special Collection Scheme which enabled 15 museums throughout England to develop interesting and challenging collections of contemporary art and craft over a five year period. This group exhibition was the first showing of Nottingham Castle’s International Contemporary Textile Collection representing the work of 20 national and international contemporary textile artists currently working in the field. The collection includes ‘Doing Without: Sustaining 7 Square Metres’ purchased in 2002 and the collaborative outcome from Through the Surface Project produced with Kyoko Nitta, purchased for the collection in 2004. The exhibition also included a specially commissioned installation of 20 darned temporary ‘barrier’ pieces which directed the visitors through the gallery and protected the work of Turner prize winner Grayson Perry.

A 64 full colour publication Revealed accompanied the project and included my own self authored essay ‘Sustaining Seven Square Metres’ and an essay by Prof Lesley Millar on the Through the Surface collaborative work with Kyoko Nitta Project overview: Nottingham Castle is one of 15 museums nationally selected for the Contemporary Art Society Special Collection Scheme with the remit of developing a new contemporary collection in relation to its already existing historic collection.

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The exhibition ‘Reveal’ and its accompanying publication ‘Revealed’ showcased work purchased for Nottingham’s new international collection of contemporary textile art between 1998 and 2005. My own work is represented by two pieces in the collection. ‘Doing Without: Sustaining 7 Square Metres’ purchased in 2002, speculatively addressed the reductive nature of my work and its reference to monochrome painting (research interests that were developed later through the exhibition ‘Sensual Austerity’, July 2006, and symposium presentation ‘Shades of Grey’, July 2007). ‘Pockets and Ventillation Grill’ purchased in 2004, was the collaborative outcome from the ‘Through the Surface Project’ produced with Japanese Artist Kyoko Nitta.

An invitation to produce new work specifically for the exhibition allowed me to extend research interests around the physical and metaphorical articulation of space firstly manifest in the speculative handrail pieces produced for the Jerwood Exhibition in 2002. ‘Barrier Units, Darn ref no.648’ addresses the physical organisation of space and ideas of modular permutation and provisional setting. The work is informed by an interest in the way that space is socially and historically constructed and mediates, constructs and reproduces meaning and value.

The handrail can be seen as both a support which directs us through space, but also as a freestanding form, can be seen as a barrier which divides space, defines boundaries and alternately either denies or allows access. As temporary or flexible modular units, however, the work clearly presents the possibility of reconfiguration. Anonymous and adopting the guise of functional object the work polices the public’s access to the work of Grayson Perry which is also within the collection.

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List of project outputs: Reveal: Nottingham’s contemporary textiles 1.Doing Without: Sustaining 7 Square Metres Date:

1999

Dimensions:

Overall dimensions: H163cm x W418cm

(3 x 124cm + 2 gaps of 23cm approx)

Individual pieces: H163cm x W124cm

Materials:

Felted wool, cotton, gesso

Process:

Quilting, hand and machine stitch

2.Barrier Units, Darn ref no.648 (10 barrier installation - configuration flexible) Date:

2005

Dimensions:

Variable according to installation configuration

Individual units: H89cm x L193cm x W24.5cm Materials:

Wool cloth, cotton thread, metal fabrication

Process:

Darning, upholstery, metal fabrication

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Business as Usual

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Group exhibition curated by Deborah Dean Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham 18 July – 4 Aug 2007 “Gallery closed for installation” is an all too depressing sign for the viewer who has made the journey without first checking the exhibition listings. Left only with the option of peering through the window to try to catch a glimpse of what might be coming next, the weary visitor is more likely to see marks left by the previous show and an untidy disarray of ladders, tools, paint cans and packaging.

Business as Usual turns this disappointment around: the gallery might be closed for re-display but it is also open for viewing. Work featured has the illusion of being the stuff of preparation, the marks and objects usually disguised or tidied away before the exhibition opening night - but closer inspection reveals them to be the beautifully crafted main event .Taking place during the space between exhibitions when the gallery is usually closed for re-hanging, this show plays with viewers perceptions and with the margins between gallery space/back of house, and between art object/non-art object. The show uses the window, foyer and

Work details:

staircase, as well as a previously “hidden”store at the top of the gallerys main stairs.

Barrier Darn, ref no.648 (10 barrier installation - configuration flexible) Date: September 2005

Artists include Susan Collis, Sean Edwards and David Ersser.

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Dimensions:

Variable according to installation configuration

Individual units:

H89cm x L193cm x W24.5cm

Materials:

Wool cloth, cotton thread, metal fabrication

Process:

Darning, upholstery, metal fabrication

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Sensual Austerity Bolton

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Arts Council funded solo touring exhibition The Hub: National Centre for Craft and Design, Sleaford, 22nd July - 10th Sept 2006. Curated by Melanie Kidd Bolton Museum and Art Gallery, 23rd - 4th Nov 2006. Curated by Sarah Teale.

The nature of the space at the Hub provided the opportunity to produce an ambitious large scale site specific installation of 27 cloth constructed bag forms which lined the Roof Gallery, plus three further site-specific interventions within the corridor and foyer areas. The exhibition in Bolton provided the opportunity to show several series of both wall based and sculptural works within Bristow’s home town – a town that was at the heart of the cotton industry and renowned for its textile heritage A 46 page full colour catalogue accompanied the exhibition and included two commissioned essays: ‘Articulate Silence’ by Elisa Oliver, Senior Lecturer Leeds Metropolitan University/Lecturer Manchester Metropolitan University; and ‘Clothing the Grid: Alterations and Alternations’ by Victoria Mitchell, Senior Lecturer Fine Art, Norwich University of the Arts.

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List of project outputs:

4. Needlepoint: ref no.7510, 3 x 63cm surround

Sensual Austerity, Bolton Museum and Art Gallery

Year:

2001

Dimensions:

H100cm (from top of handrail to the floor) x W63cm

1.Double-lined (198 x 82) (27 modular unit installation)

Of column:

height of ceiling (variable) x 43.2cm sq approx

Date:

2007

Materials:

Tapestry canvas, denim, tapestry wool, metal fixings

Dimensions:

Overall dimensions: variable according to installation

Process:

Needlepoint, upholstery

configuration Individual pieces:

H119 cm x W82 cm

Materials:

Felted wool, cotton, viscose, gesso

Process:

Quilting, bound-buttonholes, hand and machine stitch

construction 2.Barrier Darn, ref no.648 (10 barrier installation - configuration flexible) Date:

September 2005

Dimensions:

Variable according to installation configuration

Individual units: H89cm x L193cm x W24.5cm Materials:

Wool cloth, cotton thread, metal fabrication

Process:

Darning, upholstery, metal fabrication

3.18 x 51 over 11.44 Year:

2002

Dimensions:

H214cm x W 1114cm (individual bags H214cm x W51cm)

Materials:

Cotton, horsehair interfacing, gesso

Process:

Quilting, bound buttonholes, hand and machine stitch

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Sensual Austerity Sleaford

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List of project outputs:

4. Barrier Darn, ref no.648 (10 barrier installation - configuration flexible)

Sensual Austerity, The Hub: National Centre for Craft and Design, Sleaford

Date:

September 2005

Dimensions:

Variable according to installation configuration

1.Double-lined (198 x 82) (27 modular unit installation)

Individual units: H89cm x L193cm x W24.5cm

Date:

2007

Materials:

Wool cloth, cotton thread, metal fabrication

Dimensions:

Overall dimensions: variable according to installation

Process:

Darning, upholstery, metal fabrication

configuration Individual pieces: H119 cm x W82 cm

5.Needlepoint: ref no.7510, 3 x 63cm surround

Materials:

Felted wool, cotton, viscose, gesso

Year:

2001

Process:

Quilting, bound-buttonholes, hand and machine stitch

Dimensions:

H100cm (from top of handrail to the floor) x W63cm

construction 2.Light-switch ref: 203/18 Date:

2003

Dimensions:

Height: 260cm approx (from floor to top of horizontal conduit) x

Width:

variable

Materials:

White concrete, plaster, granite chippings, carborundum powder,

tapestry wool, tapestry canvas, electrical fittings

Process:

Casting, canvas work

3. Conduit ref: 203/18 Date:

2003

Dimensions:

Height: 260cm approx (from floor to top of horizontal conduit) x

Width:

variable

Materials:

Tapestry wool, tapestry canvas, cotton, electrical fittings

Process:

Canvas work, hand-stitch

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Column dimensions: height of ceiling (variable) x 43.2cm sq approx Materials:

Tapestry canvas, denim, tapestry wool, metal fixings

Process:

Needlepoint, upholstery

Unbound

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Group exhibition curated by Louise Clennell Turnpike Gallery, Leigh 15 Sept – 27 Oct 2007 What links the artists in this exhibition is their resistance to conventional artform categorisation. Straightforward definitions of what constitutes ‘art’ and ‘craft’ are redundant in their work, which slips into spaces in between these disciplines.

Perhaps the hybrid nature of these works as a reflection of each artist’s accumulated experiences and ongoing research interests. All of the work in unbound speaks with an understated, quiet modesty but listen closely on the richness of its narratives will be revealed. Artists include: Caroline Broadhead, Susie MacMurray and Elizabeth Smith.

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List of project outputs: Title:

Materially Connected

Date:

2007

Dimensions:

H66cm x W550cm x D45cm

Materials:

Laminated MDF, steel fixings, felted wool, tapestry canvas,

tapestry wool.

Process:

Timber and metal construction, upholstery, canvas work.

Title:

Surface to surface correspondence ref.8000/8892

Date:

2007

Dimensions:

H43cm x W25.5cm x D26cm

Materials:

MDF, wadding, felted wool, tapestry canvas, tapestry wool, steel

fixings.

Process:

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Timber and metal construction, upholstery, canvas work.

Cloth and Culture NOW

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Group exhibition directed by Lesley Millar, Professor of Textile Culture, UCA: Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, 29 Jan – 1 June 2008 Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, 17 Sept – 14 Dec 2008 Cloth and Culture NOW included the work of 35 contemporary textile artists from Estonia, Finland, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania and the UK, with the aim of exploring links between traditional and contemporary textile practice and wider overlapping global influences. In each of these countries textiles have traditionally played a central role, both economically and also as a carrier of the narrative of place. And in each of these countries, contemporary textile artists are using that embedded narrative of traditional practice within the discourse surrounding their practice.

A personal statement reflecting on the significance of my own cultural roots and how this cultural identity might find expression in my current practice can be found here: http://www.transitionandinfluence.com/clothandculturenow/Maxine_Bristow.html A 180 page full colour publication accompanied the exhibition and includes an interview conducted by Lesley Millar about the ideas that were informing the development of the work included in the exhibition. These reflections are extended in ‘Continuity of Touch - Textile as Silent Witness’ my contribution to Jessica Hemmings’ Textile Reader.

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Work details: ‘Surface to Surface Correspondence ref: 962/398’ Invitation to be one of 6 artists representing the UK in Cloth and Culture NOW provided the opportunity to develop research which explores our bodily engagement with space and the agency of textile in negotiating this relationship. Particular concerns within this project included the way that textile operates as a ‘silent witness’ to our repetitive routines providing an ambiguous boundary between self and ‘not self’ and the importance of tactility and the continuity of touch in this relationship.

Whereas earlier research had addressed gestures of the hand and localised touch; studio enquiry for this project considered less focused touch not limited to static contact between fingertips and surface but like textile’s corresponding organ of skin, is dispersed throughout the body. Continuing to subvert modernist tropes through which textile had traditionally been marginalised, the practice explored minimal forms which had abstract ‘neutrality’ but which also referenced the real world of function and utility. The ubiquitous pads and panels that unconsciously dictate the movement of the body and constitute the non-spaces of our built environment provided a visual and conceptual reference for the work. Countering the subjective potency that is the focus of much textile research, the upholstered panels of our transport system and corporate furniture provide a more detached stage set for the repetitive routines of our busy lives, silently soaking up the clamour of activity in their dense absorbent surfaces. These unconscious patterns of behaviour are echoed through the invisibly laborious repetitive process of counted-thread embroidery used to create the densely worked ‘antimacassar’ covers which reference the woven moquette developed specifically for the transport industry and the legacies of textile within our industrial and cultural heritage.

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List of project outputs: Cloth and Culture NOW

1.‘Surface to Surface Correspondence ref: 962/398’ exhibited in: Cloth and

5.Chapter contribution ‘Continuity of Touch - Textile as Silent Witness’ published

Culture Now: Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts (SCVA), University East Anglia,

in Hemmings, J. (2012) The Textile Reader. Oxford Berg, pp.44-51.

29.01.08 – 01.06.08 Date:

2008

Dimensions:

H119cm x W171cm x 12cm

Materials:

25 count ‘Lugana’ evenweave cotton cloth, stranded cotton

Maxine Bristow: ‘Continuity of Touch - Textile as Silent Witness’.

thread, cotton wadding, timber, steel.

Paper originally presented at a Repeat Repeat conference, University of Chester,

Process:

Cross stitch embroidery, upholstery, timber and powder coated

19th, 20th April 2007, convened by Maxine Bristow and Elisa Oliver. Subsequently

http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-textile-reader-9781847886347/

steel fabrication.

published in: Hemmings, J. (2012) The Textile Reader. Oxford: Berg.

2. ‘Surface to Surface Correspondence ref: 962/398’ exhibited in Cloth and Cul-

Maxine Bristow is an artist and Reader at the University of Chester, England. Her

ture Now: Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester: 17.09.08 – 14.12.08

practice over the past decade is epitomised by an excruciating attention to the details of textile production. Work is often created in unassuming series that ask us

3. Maxine Bristow self-authored essay in response to curator’s rationale for Cloth

to reconsider points of contact with the concrete world around us. In an expand-

and Culture NOW and themes of transition and influence, available on Cloth and

ed version of her original conference paper presented in 2007 at the “Repeat, Re-

Culture NOW website.

peat” Conference held at the University of Chester, Bristow determines the focus of her practice at the time to lie in what she refers to as “the ubiquitous, undif-

http://www.transitionandinfluence.com/clothandculturenow/Maxine_Bristow.html

ferentiated textile objects of the built environment” that are overlooked by many.

In her writing, she explores the hierarchy of the senses we live under currently and

4. Conference paper ‘Continuity of Touch - Textile as Silent Witness’ documenting

a tendency to side line touch as a way of knowing. Textiles, she writes, have the

the research informing ‘Surface to Surface Correspondence ref: 962/398’ deliv-

ability to operate as a “silent witness” and communicate through a thoroughly ar-

ered at Repeat Repeat, two day international conference held at the University of

ticulate material language of their own. To know this, you have to touch textiles,

Chester, 19th, 20th April 2007

even when it looks like you shouldn’t.

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(Editors introduction)

Within the traditional hierarchy of the senses and corresponding privileging of sight, visuality has tended to be the prevailing paradigm with subsequent and far reaching consequences for the development of western culture. Playing a significant role in philosophy, underpinning scientific reason, and as the foundation of empirical knowledge, the visual is inextricably bound up with notions of objective truth, seemingly providing the necessary reliable evidence through which we come to know ourselves and the world. Reaching an apogee in Clement Greenberg’s tenet of opticality and the idea that modernist art should be apprehended through ‘eyesight alone’, it has been fundamental to the theory and history of visual culture and instrumental in the drive towards modernist aesthetic autonomy.1 Within this text, however, I would like to shift the focus from visuality and the realm of visual culture to consider the significance of the material dimension. I would like to propose, that the embodied testimony of material culture, is as David Howes suggests, ‘the most fundamental domain of cultural expression, the medium through which all the values and practices of society are enacted’.2 As such, I believe it can provide us with insights that are compelling and difficult to refute. These insights into the relationship between subjects and objects enabled by material culture can in turn provide a useful critical framework for practices such as my own where there is an interest in notions of objecthood and the abstract potency of textile.

It is my intention, therefore, to investigate the significance of the material dimension by providing some broad insights into the field of material culture and the way that objects bear witness and provide us with convincing testimony, ‘not because they are evident and physically constrain or enable but often precisely because we do not see them’.3 Operating on the threshold of the functional and symbolic and as the vehicles against which we stage the routines of our everyday lives, they are written into the structure of79

society like a language, yet it is a language that is essentially non-discursive.

Crucial to the operation of this non-discursive mode of communication is the sensory modality of touch. The historical relegation of touch in the hierarchy of the senses is challenged, and I consider what might be described as a sensual revolution within the arts, humanities, and social sciences, suggesting that the immediacy and continuity of touch in the reciprocal relationship between subject and object makes it a particularly potent vehicle for both cultural and artistic expression.

What has prompted the research are some new pieces of work (which take the form of ambiguous upholstered structures) conceived in relation to the proportions to the body where the point of bodily contact – at which the surface of the body meets the surface world – has been densely stitched.

This new work is a development of an earlier body of work 4 which explored our engagement with space, and in particular those aspects of the built environment such as light-switches, handles, and handrails, with which we have an actual physical though often unconscious bodily relationship and which instigate routinely repeated patterns of behaviour.

Positioned at points of transition, these often unnoticed aspects of our built environment invisibly mark boundaries between different realms of space: between inside and outside, public and private. Conceived as a free standing form, the handrail becomes an actual physical barrier yet one that is clearly provisional, framing, dividing, or alternately denying or allowing access to space.

Fundamental to this earlier body of work and indeed to more recent practice is the par80

ticular role that textile plays in mediating between the body and the built environment - the way that textile as skin or membrane provides on the one hand a very real, tangible point of contact and material boundary and on the other hand a more ambiguous metaphorical boundary between self and ‘not self’ - and also of course, what is crucial to this relationship, the importance of tactility and continuity of touch.

Whereas the earlier work was largely concerned with gestures of the hand and localised touch, the new work is concerned with less focused touch, touch that is not limited to static contact between fingertips and surface but dispersed throughout the body like its corresponding organ of skin. The stimuli for this new work are the simple, anonymous, non-descript, mass-produced, upholstered pads and panels that constitute the nonspaces of our built environment. The padded surfaces found on the bus, tube and train or the upholstered panels of corporate furniture are characterised by their very lack of outstanding, individual, or unusual features. Yet as textile objects with which we have daily physical contact, they provide the stage against which the repetitive routines of our every-day lives are enacted, silently soaking up the clamour of activity in their dense, absorbent, and unyielding surfaces.

Reflections on the new work have instigated several lines of enquiry, but as already indicated the essential focus of the research has been materiality and material culture. Material culture, however, is itself a very broad interdisciplinary (and some say undisciplined) field which simultaneously intersects and transcends a range of other disciplines. It is, as Judy Attfield suggests in Wild Things The Material Culture of Everyday Life ‘a contradictory project, because although its main focus is on the material object it is not really about things in themselves, but how people make sense of the world through physical objects, what psychoanalytical theory calls ‘object relations’ in the explanation of identity formation, what sociology invokes as the physical manifestation of culture, and anthro-81

pology refers to as the objectification of social relations’.5 However, material culture as the name would imply centres ‘on the idea that materiality is an integral dimension of culture’, and that ‘the study of the material dimension is as fundamental to understanding culture as is a focus on language’6. As Christopher Tilley suggests in the opening chapter of the Handbook of Material Culture, a recently published comprehensive volume dedicated to the field, Things are meaningful and significant not only because they are necessary to sustain life and society, to reproduce or transform social relations and mediate differential interests and values, but because they provide essential tools for thought. Material forms are essential vehicles for the (conscious or unconscious) self-realisation of the identities of individuals and groups because they provide a fundamental non-discursive mode of communication.7 In a further chapter in which Tilley discusses material culture’s central concept of objectification he states: Material forms as objectifications of social relations and gendered identities, often ‘talk’ silently about … relationships in ways impossible in speech or formal discourses…..‘the artefact through its “silent” speech and “written” presence, speaks what cannot be spoken, writes what cannot be written, and articulates that which remains conceptually separated in social practice. Material forms complement what can be communicated in language rather than duplicating or reflecting what can be said in words in a material form. If material culture simply reified in a material medium that which could be communicated in words it would be quite redundant. The non-verbal materiality of the medium is thus of central importance.8 82

So it is the silent, but undoubtedly potent nature of this embedded/embodied material language which has resonances with my own practice.

Again as already indicated, crucial to the idea of the material object as a non discursive language is the suppressed modality of touch, a sense that is implicit in textile. ‘Paradoxically it is the immediacy of touch that makes it a potent vehicle of expression but in its resistance to representation and ‘polymorphous diversity’ impossible to pin down and unnamenable to discourse’.9 In its immediacy it is similar to material culture and the landscape of the everyday in which it operates and of which Henri Lefebvre writes ‘(it) is the most universal and the most unique condition, the most social and the most individuated, the most obvious and the best hidden’.10 Historically ranked in relation to their degree of immediacy, of the five senses, taste and touch, in direct contact with the world, were deemed to be lowest. Whereas sight distances and objectifies and is characterised by a shift away from tangible sensory experience towards an abstracted system of visual representation, touch, by implication remains subjective and limited, and is subsequently equated with a lack of conceptual sophistication.

The past few years, however, have seen something of a sensual revolution in the humanities and social sciences with a considerable number of recent publications aiming, as David Howes suggests in The Empire of the Senses The Sensual Culture Reader, to overturn ‘linguistic and textual modes of interpretation and placing sensory experience at the forefront of cultural analysis’.11 Philosophy, visual culture, and architecture have similarly seen challenges to the hegemony of vision and a resurgence of interest in sensory values, practices and processes. The postmodern revival of interest in the Baroque’s very conscious address to the senses has83

provided a useful point of reference for thinking through the concerns of my own work, as has the classic text of architectural theory The Eyes of the Skin by Juhani Pallasmaa which has recently been republished as a revised and extended edition.

In Quoting Caravaggio, Contemporary Art, Preposterous History, Mieke Bal investigates how the Baroque resurfaces in the work of a number of contemporary artists and discusses the implications of this in terms of how we conceive of both history and culture in the present. Bal puts forward the idea that ‘the current interest in the Baroque acts out what is itself a baroque vision, a vision that can be characterised as a vacillation between the subject and object of that vision and which changes the status of the both.12 In The Eyes of the Skin Pallasmaa discusses the importance of hapticity and unfocused peripheral vision to the experience of architecture and indeed as ‘the very essence of lived experience’, suggesting that while focused vision pushes us out of the space making us mere spectators, unconscious peripheral perception transforms retinal gestalt into spatial and bodily experiences.13 As with the ideas that are informing my new work, it is this capacity of objects to remain anonymous and peripheral to our vision yet determinant of our behaviour that is of particular interest.

The relationship between optical visuality and haptic visuality also finds a context in contemporary painting which explores the sensuous materiality of paint and foregrounds the method of its own manufacture. In a chapter in Unframed Practices and Politics of Women’s Contemporary Painting edited by Rosemary Betterton (which interestingly in the context of textile practice is entitled ‘Threads’), Rosa Lee identifies in her own work and that of the other painters whom she discusses, ‘characteristics that exceed the purely visual and relate to somatic senses of touch, rhythm and gesture’.14 In considering 84 this work Lee makes reference to the critic Laura Marks’ book The Skin of the Film

and her description of haptic visuality as ‘the metaphorical caressing of the surface of an object’.15 These notions of haptic visuality and the acknowledgement of a greater interaction of tactile, visual, and symbolic registers clearly provide useful critical frameworks for work such as my own that employs textile materials and processes.

However, to return to the silent witness that is the subject of this reflection; how do textile objects bear witness and what is the nature of their evidence?

In her article ‘On Stuff and Nonsense: the Complexity of Cloth’16 Claire Pajackowsa provides some insights into ‘the complex and multidisciplinary significance of textiles in culture’ suggesting that this complexity derives from the fact that ‘textiles are culturally situated on the threshold between the functional and the symbolic’.

In terms of their functional dimension, like a second skin, the absorbent and ephemeral surfaces of textiles literally provide material evidence, bearing witness to the continual and repetitive contact with the body, accumulating a patina of use and revealing the wear and tear of routine activity. Caught within the supple striated surface of warp and weft or soft cut pile are the invisible yet incontestable indexical traces of the physical correspondences between subject and object. Maybe I have watched too much CSI but I can only imagine the complexity of the narratives that the upholstered panels of our transport system would yield if subjected to forensic investigation. What is interesting, however, in relation to the hard wearing moquette fabric that has been used within our transport systems since the age of Victorian railways, is the fact that it was designed specifically to disrupt or mask the presence of dirt or stains and thereby doesn’t give of such evidence too readily.

In terms of their symbolic dimension, the significance of textiles in the formation of iden85

tity and subject relations has been well documented. ‘Because clothes make direct contact with the body, and domestic furnishings define the personal spaces inhabited by the body, the material which forms a large part of the stuff of which they are made - cloth - is proposed as one of the most intimate of thing-types that materialises the connection between the body and the outer world’.17 Like the skin to which it is often equated, cloth as a mediating tissue or membrane, or what Michael Serre’s calls a ‘milieu’,18 is often seen as an ambiguous boundary and it is this ambiguity that produces the complex relationship between subject and object. In The Skin Ego19 the French theorist and psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu notably explores relations between the experience of the skin and the formation and sustaining of the ego, identifying its nine functions as: supporting, containing, shielding, individuating, connecting, sexualising, recharging, signifying, assaulting/destroying.20 From Winnicott’s baby’s blanket as the exemplary metaphor of subject individuation to the role that dress plays in simultaneously revealing and concealing our personal and collective identities, textile performs a fundamental role in negotiating the changing relationship between our inner selves and the world that we inhabit.

But as Steven Connor suggests in The Book of Skin, ‘It is not only individual psychological life but also cultural life that is lived at the level of, and through the intercession of, the skin, and its many actual and imaginary doublings and multiplications’.21 As one of the largest categories of material culture, textile plays a fundamental role in structuring social rules and interactions. As essential accoutrement of cultural practice it performs both a material and symbolic role as it bears witness to the rituals and rites of passage that accompany us through our passage from birth to death, materialising and expressing otherwise immaterial or abstract entities.22

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However, in terms of my own work, my interest is not in the textile objects that are loaded with subjective significance but in the ubiquitous, undifferentiated textile objects of the built environment which, like the mass produced upholstered pads and panels that constitute the non-spaces of our transport system and public institutions, are characterised by their uniformity and anonymity.

The significance of these objects does not noticeably reside in their form nor is there an overt subjective process of identification, instead the objects remain dormant and in a permanent state of potential only to be activated through the process of repetition. It is the social practices that are enacted in relation to these objects that unlock their meaning and in this respect these anonymous objects of the built environment are similar to other objects in the domain of material culture in that their meaning is inscribed by narratives of use. Examining our contemporary need for engagement with our environment and sense of belonging, Neil Leach discusses the role of performativity and the way that a visceral process of identification comes through repetitive routines and the ‘accumulative iteration of certain practices’.

Through the repetition of (bodily) rituals.... spaces are ‘re-membered’... The space becomes a space of projection, as memories of previous experiences are ‘projected’ onto its material form. At the same time, the body becomes the site of introjection, as a recording surface registering those previous spatial experiences.23 The unconscious patterns of behaviour instigated through repetitive action and routine are echoed in my own work through its repetitive processes, particularly recently, through the techniques of needlepoint and darning. As with the previous handrail and barrier pieces, within the new work the temporal is collapsed into the spatial as both the imagined corporeal habits awakened by the form of the work and the laborious

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processes and the physical and mental drama of the work’s production become concentrated and embodied in the intensely stitched surfaces. In an absurd reversal, the hardwearing, industrially-produced surfaces of the non-spaces of our environment have been replaced by hand-made counterparts which materialise the point of bodily contact and transform the efficiency of the mass-produced cloth into something far more susceptible to the vagaries of use.

Similar to the human-centred design of the upholstered pads and panels of our built environment that have informed the new work, the ‘back-rest’ forms and ‘body-facing pad of Surface to Surface Correspondence ref: 962/398 (2007) (see fig 1.), and Surface to Surface Correspondence ref: 8000/8892 (2007), have a regular geometric uniformity and detached presence that belies their underlying ergonomic principles. Lacking the obvious bodily contours of traditional soft furnishings these upholstered forms, like the upholstered pads of gym equipment, are nonetheless designed in particular relationship to the standardised average dimensions of the body providing invisible support, subtly manipulating, improving ‘fit’, and silently negotiating its physical engagement with the external world.

It is this interplay of formal autonomy and functional context and the tension between a seeming objective detachment and a quiet embodied presence that is a central concern of my practice.

The somatic sensuality of cloth and the imaginary subjective narratives that surround the busy objects of material culture are constrained and silenced in my work as it strategically reflects the autonomous and authoritative formality of a modernist aesthetic. Together with the sensuality of the materials and the laborious processes of production that are hidden behind the work’s coolly detached façade (employing material strategies of geo88

metric form, the grid, and repetitive non-relational composition), what we are presented with is the suppressed embodied subject. However such is the material and symbolic potency of textile that any protocols of reduction only serve to amplify and concentrate the message and any attempt at disinterestedness or formal autonomy is continually disrupted by the work’s ambiguous sense of objecthood and countered by the tactility of the textile materials and processes employed in its production. The expressive potential of the work is not communicated outwardly through an overt sensuality or explicit references, but is deeply embedded and embodied, articulated through the awakening of corporeal practices, nuance of gesture, slow repetitive rhythms, and a dense accumulation of subtly modulated surfaces that silently speak of the process of their making.

In common with other objects of material culture, I would suggest that it is this embodied non-verbal materiality of the medium that makes textile a particularly potent vehicle of cultural and artistic expression. Placed in direct proximity to the body, implicated in the practices, rhythms, and routines of our everyday experience, and continuously and invisibly negotiating the relationship between self and other, it provides us with what may be a silent yet undoubtedly powerfully convincing testimony.

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References 1.

See Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes, The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth

(Eds). London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage Publications, p.62.

Century French Thought, University of California Press: Berkeley, Los Angeles,

9.

David Howes, (Ed), ‘Historicising Perception’ in Empire of the Senses, The

1994.

Sensual Culture Reader. Oxford, New York: Berg, 2004, p.56.

For what Jay calls a ‘synoptic survey’ of ‘ocularcentric discourse’.

10.

Henri Lefebvre, 1987, The Everyday and Everydayness p7-11. Yale French

2.

David Howes, Sensual Relations, Engaging the Senses in Culture and

Studies, Volume 73, Fall, cited in Judy Attfield, Wild Things, The Material Culture

Social Theory, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2003, p.xi.

of Everyday Life. Oxford, New York: Berg, 2000, p.9.

3.

11.

Daniel Miller, Materiality (Politics, History, and Culture), Duke University

See David Howes, ‘Introduction’ in Empire of the Senses, The Sensual

Press: Durham and London, 2005, p5.

Culture Reader. Oxford, New York: Berg, 2005, p.56. Other publications by David

4.

Howes include: Howes, D. (2003), Sensual Relations, Engaging the Senses in

See artist journals at Through the Surface: Collaborating Textile Artists

from Britain and Japan http://www.throughthesurface.com, and accompanying

Culture and Social Theory, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press; Howes,

catalogue essay: ‘Material Trace – Marking Time and Defining Space’ in Through

D. ed., The Varieties of Sensory Experience: A Sourcebook in the Anthropology of

the Surface Collaborating Textile Artists from Britain and Japan, The Surrey Insti-

the Senses, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991. Berg publishing have also

tute of Art and Design, 2004, p.58-59.

produced the ‘Sensory Formations’ series of ‘readers’ in the senses which in addi-

5.

tion to Howes’s general reader Empire of the Senses include: Bull, M., and Black,

Judy Attfield, Wild Things, The Material Culture of Everyday Life. Berg:

Oxford, New York, 2000, p.1.

L., eds., (2003) The Auditory Culture Reader; Classen, C. ed., (2005) The Book of

6.

Touch; Korsmever, C. ed., (2005) The Taste Culture Reader: Experiencing Food and

Chris Tilley, Webb Keane, Susan Kuchler, Mike Rowlands, and Patricia

Spyer (Eds), ‘Introduction’ in Handbook of Material Culture, London, Thousand

Drink; Drobnick, J. ed.’ (2006) The Smell Culture Reader.

Oaks, New Delhi: Sage Publications, p.1.

12.

7.

University of California Press: Berkley, Los Angeles, 2001.

Christopher Tilley, ‘Part I, Theoretical Perspectives’ in Handbook of Mate-

Mieke Bal, Quoting Caravaggio: Contemporary Art, Preposterous History,

rial Culture, Chris Tilley, Webb Keane, Susanne Kuechler, Mike Rowlands, and

13.

Patricia Spyer (Eds). London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage Publications, p.7.

Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2005, p.13.

8.

14.

Christopher Tilley, ‘Objectification’ in Handbook of Material Culture,

Chris Tilley, Webb Keane, Susanne Kuechler, Mike Rowlands, and Patricia Spyer

Rosemary Betterton (Ed.), Unframed Practices and Politics of Women’s

Contemporary Painting. London, New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2004, p.6.

15.

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Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin Architecture and the Senses. John

Rosa Lee ‘Threads’ in Unframed Practices and Politics of Women’s Con-

temporary Painting, Rosemary Betterton (Ed.). London, New York: I.B. Tauris & Co

Ltd, 2004, p.126.

16.

Claire Pajackowsa, ‘On Stuff and Nonsense: the Complexity of Cloth’ in

Textile The Journal of Cloth and Culture, Volume 3, Issue 3, Fall 2005, p.223.

17.

Attfield, op. cit., p.124.

18.

See Steven Connor, The Book of Skin, London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 2004,

p.26.

19.

Didier Anzieu, The Skin Ego, Trans Chris Turner. New Haven: Yale Univer-

sity Press, 1989.

20.

See also Steven Connor, A Skin that Walks, http://www.bbk.ac.uk/Eng-

lish/skc/skinwalks/ 21.

Steven Connor, The Book of Skin, op. cit., p48.

22.

For a useful study on the tactile and tangible components of memory and

how we use objects to give continuity to and meaning to human experience, see Marius Kwint, Christpher Breward, and Jeremy Aynsley (Eds) Material Memories Design and Evocations. Oxford, New York: Berg, 1999.

23.

Neil Leach, Camouflage. Cambridge, Massachsetts: MIT Press, 2006.

p182.

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Component configuration 14211-CH22LB

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Exhibition details: Component configuration 14211-CH22LB CASC Contemporary Art Space Chester 14 Feb – 18 Feb 2011 Norwich University College of the Arts 21 Feb – 25 Feb This exhibition provided an opportunity to test speculative developments in the practice arising out of PhD practice based research entitled ‘Pragmatics of attachment and detachment: the productive indeterminacy of textile’.

Work details: Component configuration 18111-CH22LB Date:

2011

Dimensions:

Variable

Medium:

Cotton cloth, woollen cloth, gesso, tapestry wool, powder

coated steel, timber, aluminium tube, metal curtain rings,

laminate.

Process:

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Cloth, timber, metal construction, needlepoint.

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Bite-Size: Miniature Textiles from Japan and the UK

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Touring exhibition, curated by Lesley Millar, Professor of Textile Culture, UCA: Japan House, Daiwa Anglo Japanese Foundation, London 31 Oct – 14 Dec 2011 Gallery, Gallery, Kyoto, Japan, 25 Feb – 10 March 2012 Nagoya University of the Arts, Tokyo, Japan, 11 May – 23 May 2012 This exhibition celebrates fifteen years of collaborative activity between contemporary textile artists from Japan and the UK. It incudes miniature works from each of the artists, 51 in total, who have taken part in Millar’s various projects and was the first time that their works were shown together. Those taking part represent some of the most important contemporary textile practitioners in Japan and the UK, alongside some of the most exciting emerging talent from the recent exhibitions.

More information can be found on the Diawa Foundation website: http://www.dajf.org.uk/exhibition/bite-sized-miniature-textiles-from-japan-andthe-uk Work details: Artefact Date:

2011

Size:

L25cm x W16cm x D4cm

Materials:

Faux leather, cross stitched cotton, grosgrain ribbon, metal

fixings, wood Photo credit:

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Rob Meighen

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Z-depth buffer: component configuration 261111-E84QN

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Z-depth buffer (component configuration 261111-E84QN) Two person exhibition with Sally Morfill Five Years Gallery, London, 26 Nov – 11 Dec 2011 Z-depth buffer is a term which refers to spatial depth information contained in rendered images. For Sally Morfill and I it is the materiality of surfaces and objects that provide the buffers in our experience of moving through the world. For more information see Five Years website: http://www.fiveyears.org.uk/archive2/pages/149/Z-DEPTH_BUFFER/149.html Work details: Component (re)configuration 111211-CH22LB Date:

2011

Dimensions:

Variable

Medium:

Cotton cloth, woollen cloth, 25 count ‘lugana’ even weave

cotton, stranded embroidery thread, viscose embroidery thread,

faux leather, grosgrain ribbon, powder coated steel, MDF,

aluminium tube, metal curtain rings.

Process:

Cloth, timber, metal construction, digital stitch, darning, cross

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stitch

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Component (re)configuration 111211-CH22LB

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Shown within the foyer gallery at the University of Chester, this exhibition was a reconfiguration of elements from the ‘Z-depth buffer’ exhibition at Five Years gallery, London.

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Transformations: component configuration 12712-IP331BT

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Smiths Row Gallery, Bury St Edmunds, 12 July – 1 Sept 2012, curated by Rosie Grieve ‘Transformations’ was part of the celebrations marking Smiths Row 40th anniver-

a sense of mutability where meaning is not stable but continually in flux - pro-

sary and showcased the work of a number of leading UK artists that the gallery

duced through temporary connections and coalitions emerging from a series of

has supported throughout its history. The aim of the exhibition was to highlight

provisionally staged tableau.

the significance of venues such as Smiths Row in providing a platform for artists in

The aim is to draw on the cultural and psychological potency of textile and

the early stages of their careers before they often go on to exhibit at higher profile

establish an affirmative subjective attachment. However, at the same time, the

national venues and international galleries. The artists included in the exhibition

hope is to also underscore the precarious nature of modern subjectivity by resist-

were also selected because of the way that their work explores seeming contradic-

ing conceptual synthesis and maintaining the material otherness of the work. A

tions to transform objects or meanings. Artists include: Catherine Bertola, Susan

reductive and formal vocabulary both provides a level of ambiguity where mean-

Collis, Ben Coode-Adams, Roger Hiorns, Haroon Mizra, Freddie Robins, Caroline

ing is suggested yet unable to settle and allows for a dynamic tension between

Wright.

aesthetic affect and wider social contexts. Arguably, it is this staged artifice and ‘complicit’ formalism that is particularly important for textile in terms of its ability

Project overview: Component Configuration 12.7.12-IP331BT Invitation to be part of the ‘Transformations’ exhibition provided the first opportunity to speculatively test new strategies of making arising out of PhD research entitled ‘Pragmatics of attachment and detachment: the productive indeterminacy of textile’. This research explores the agency of textile from three perspectives: the diverse contexts from which textile derives its contradictory meanings; the subjective and objective dimensions of the experiential encounter; and the constitution of my own subjectivity as it is materialised and mobilised in relation to the textile and fine art communities in which I operate.

The new methodological approach involves the creation of individual elements that can be variously configured…. and reconfigured. The intention is to maintain 112

to assimilate with, and differentiate from, its mass material counterparts.

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List of project outputs 1.‘Component Configuration 12.7.12-IP331BT’ (exhibited in Transformations

Exhibition dates and venues:

Smiths Row Gallery 12.7.12 – 1.9.12)

Japan House, Daiwa Anglo Japanese Foundation, London 31.10.11 – 14.12.11 Gallery, Gallery, Kyoto, Japan, 25.2.12 – 10.3.12

Date:

2012

Dimensions: Variable Materials:

Woollen cloth, marl cotton cloth, faux leather,

25 count ‘Lugana’ evenweave cotton cloth, silver metalised

perforated cloth, stranded cotton thread, grosgrain ribbon, iron

flex, laminate, foam grips, timber, aluminium.

Process:

Cross stitch embroidery, upholstery, timber and aluminium

construction.

2.”Component Configuration 22.10.12CH22LB’ (exhibited at Chester Contemporary Art Space, University of Chester, 22.10.12 – 5.11.12) 3.Staged ‘component’ AR010 from above configuration also included in exhibition Bite-Size: Miniature Textiles from Japan and the UK: Date:

2012

Dimensions

L25cm x W16cm x D4cm

Materials:

Faux leather, 25 count ‘Lugana’ evenweave cotton cloth,

stranded cotton thread, grosgrain ribbon, metal fixings, timber.

Process:

Cross stitch embroidery, cloth and timber construction

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Nagoya University of the Arts, Tokyo, Japan 11.5.12 – 23.5.12

Component (re)configuration 121012-CH22LB

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CASC Contemporary Art Space Chester, 12 Oct – 2 Nov 2012 Shown within the CASC gallery at the University of Chester, this exhibition was a

A reductive and formal vocabulary both provides a level of ambiguity where

reconfiguration of elements from the ‘Transformations’ exhibition at Smiths Row

meaning is suggested yet unable to settle and allows for a dynamic tension be-

gallery, Bury St Edmunds.

tween aesthetic affect and wider social contexts. Arguably, it is this staged artifice and ‘complicit’ formalism that is particularly important for textile in terms of its

Project overview: ‘Transformations’ (component (re)configuration 121012-CH22LB) Invitation to be part of the ‘Transformations’ exhibition provided the first opportunity to speculatively test new strategies of making arising out of PhD research entitled ‘Pragmatics of attachment and detachment: the productive indeterminacy of textile’. This research explores the agency of textile from three perspectives: the diverse contexts from which textile derives its contradictory meanings; the subjective and objective dimensions of the experiential encounter; and the constitution of my own subjectivity as it is materialised and mobilised in relation to the textile and fine art communities in which I operate.

The new methodological approach involves the creation of individual elements that can be variously configured…. and reconfigured. The intention is to maintain a sense of mutability where meaning is not stable but continually in flux - produced through temporary connections and coalitions emerging from a series of provisionally staged tableau.

The aim is to draw on the cultural and psychological potency of textile and establish an affirmative subjective attachment. However, at the same time, the hope is to also underscore the precarious nature of modern subjectivity by resisting conceptual synthesis and maintaining the material otherness of the work.

122

ability to assimilate with, and differentiate from, its mass material counterparts.

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125

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128

129

List of project outputs 1.‘Component Configuration 12.7.12-IP331BT’ (exhibited in ‘Transformations’ Smiths Row Gallery 12.7.12 – 1.9.12)

Exhibition dates and venues: Japan House, Daiwa Anglo Japanese Foundation, London 31.10.11 – 14.12.11

Date:

2012

Dimensions: Variable Materials:

Woollen cloth, marl cotton cloth, faux leather, 25 count ‘Lugana’

evenweave cotton cloth, silver metalised perforated cloth,

stranded cotton thread, grosgrain ribbon, iron flex, laminate,

foam grips, timber, aluminium.

Process:

Cross stitch embroidery, upholstery, timber and aluminium

construction.

2.‘Component Configuration 22.10.12CH22LB’ (exhibited at Chester Contemporary Art Space, University of Chester, 22.10.12 – 5.11.12) 3. Staged ‘component’ AR010 from above configuration also included in exhibition Bite-Size: Miniature Textiles from Japan and the UK: Date:

2012

Dimensions:

L25cm x W16cm x D4cm

Materials:

Faux leather, 25 count ‘Lugana’ evenweave cotton cloth,

stranded cotton thread, grosgrain ribbon, metal fixings, timber.

Process:

Cross stitch embroidery, cloth and timber construction

130

Gallery, Gallery, Kyoto, Japan, 25.2.12 – 10.3.12 Nagoya University of the Arts, Tokyo, Japan 11.5.12 – 23.5.12

Concordance: component configuration 26713-M156ER

131

Solo exhibition, curated by Amy George.

Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, 29 July – 1 Sept 2013

and disciplinary conventions from which textile derives its potentially contradictory meanings. However, far from being bound by these conventions, the work aims

Concordance consisted of a series of six site specific sculptural interventions

to maintain a sense of mutability where meaning is produced through temporary

arising out of PhD research that temporarily inhabited the café/foyer areas and

connections across the diversity of social, historical and cultural contexts that

textile gallery of the Whitworth Gallery for a month prior to the gallery’s closure

operate within the gallery environment.

to complete a transformational fifteen million pound refurbishment on the 1st September 2013.

The self-conscious formal staging of the scenarios reference modernist protocols of distance epitomised within the conventions of museological display and the

A brochure produced in collaboration with Liverpool based design practice Lawn

aesthetic artifice of formal autonomy. However, they also draw on the aesthetic

Creative was incorporated within one of the interventions and included an

staging of everyday mass material objects within interior styling and retail display,

invited essay by Dr Antoinette McKane, Post-Doctoral Teaching Fellow, Museum

where objects and materials that are normally caught up in the messy business of

and Heritage Studies, Liverpool Hope University.

everyday life - or in the case of retail display have yet to enter into circulation - are removed from the business of living and aestheticised through formal arrange-

Project overview: ‘Concordance’ component configuration 26713-M156ER Concordance is a series of sculptural interventions that temporarily inhabited various spaces in the Whitworth Gallery, Manchester. Occupying the café/foyer area and parts of the textile gallery, the interventions provided an opportunity to extend new strategies of making and conceptual frameworks developing out of PhD research within a specific museological context.

This new approach involves the creation of a ‘catalogue’ of individual ‘components’ that can be variously configured….and reconfigured. The points of departure for this catalogue of components are the multiple, complex, material 132

ment.

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4.‘Chair’

List of project outputs

Date: 2013 1.Component configuration (horizontal)

Dimensions

Date: 2013

Materials:

Aluminium, marl cotton cloth, woollen cloth, gesso,

Dimensions

Variable

foam grips, laminate, timber.

Materials:

Faux leather, 25 count ‘Lugana’ evenweave cotton cloth,

Process:

Bound buttonholes; cloth, timber and aluminium con

marl cotton cloth, grosgrain ribbon, laminate, timber,

struction.

aluminium, powder coated steel.

5.‘Stand’

Process:

Cross stitch embroidery; digitally stitched cloth; cloth,

Date: 2013

timber and metal construction.

Dimensions

L25cm x W16cm x D4cm

L25cm x W16cm x D4cm

2.Component configuration (vertical)

Materials:

Faux leather, woollen cloth, elastic, steel, laminate.

Date: 2013

Process:

Digitally stitched cloth; cloth, timber, powder coated

Dimensions

Variable

steel construction.

Materials:

Woollen cloth, faux leather, 25 count ‘Lugana’ even

6 Leaflet holder’

weave cotton cloth, 14 count ‘Aida’, grosgrain ribbon,

Date: 2013

timber, powder coated steel, plaster, sisal

Dimensions

Process:

Cross stitch embroidery; cloth, timber and metal con

Materials:

Laminate, timber, aluminium, foam grip.

struction, plaster dipped sisal

Process:

Timber and aluminium construction.

L25cm x W16cm x D4cm

3.‘Shelf’ Date: 2013

7.‘Catalogue’ brochure designed in collaboration with Lawn Creative design

Dimensions

L25cm x W16cm x D4cm

practice, Liverpool with invited essay by Dr Antoinette McKane, Post-Doctoral

Materials:

Cotton shirting, 25 count ‘Lugana’ evenweave cotton

Teaching Fellow, Museum and Heritage Studies, Liverpool Hope University.

cloth, stranded cotton thread, timber, powder coated

steel, plaster, sisal

8. Forthcoming: Exhibition review Rhiannon Williams, Textile, The Journal of Cloth

Process:

Cross stitch embroidery; cloth, timber and metal con

and Culture, Bloomsbury.

struction, plaster dipped sisal.

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Component (re)configuration 23913-CH22LB

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CASC Contemporary Art Space Chester 23 Sept – 2013 Dates Shown within the CASC gallery at the University of Chester, this exhibition was a reconfiguration of elements from the Concordance exhibition at the Whitworth Gallery, Manchester Project overview: ‘Concordance’ (component (re)configuration 23913-CH22LB) Concordance is a series of sculptural interventions that temporarily inhabited various spaces in the Whitworth Gallery, Manchester. Occupying the café/foyer area and parts of the textile gallery, the interventions provided an opportunity to extend new strategies of making and conceptual frameworks developing out of PhD research within a specific museological context.

This new approach involves the creation of a ‘catalogue’ of individual ‘components’ that can be variously configured….and reconfigured. The points of departure for this catalogue of components are the multiple, complex, material and disciplinary conventions from which textile derives its potentially contradictory meanings.

However, far from being bound by these conventions, the work aims to maintain a sense of mutability where meaning is produced through temporary connections across the diversity of social, historical and cultural contexts that operate within the gallery environment.

The self-conscious formal staging of the scenarios reference modernist protocols of distance epitomised within the conventions of museological display and the aesthetic artifice of formal autonomy. However, they also draw on the aesthetic staging of everyday mass material objects within interior styling and retail display, where objects and materials that are normally caught up in the messy business of everyday life - or in the case of retail display have yet to enter into circulation - are removed from the business of living and aestheticised through formal arrangement.

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4.‘Chair’

List of project outputs

Date: 2013 1.Component configuration (horizontal)

Dimensions

Date: 2013

Materials:

Aluminium, marl cotton cloth, woollen cloth, gesso,

Dimensions

Variable

foam grips, laminate, timber.

Materials:

Faux leather, 25 count ‘Lugana’ evenweave cotton cloth,

Process:

Bound buttonholes; cloth, timber and aluminium con

marl cotton cloth, grosgrain ribbon, laminate, timber,

struction.

aluminium, powder coated steel.

5.‘Stand’

Process:

Cross stitch embroidery; digitally stitched cloth; cloth,

Date: 2013

timber and metal construction.

Dimensions

L25cm x W16cm x D4cm

L25cm x W16cm x D4cm

2.Component configuration (vertical)

Materials:

Faux leather, woollen cloth, elastic, steel, laminate.

Date: 2013

Process:

Digitally stitched cloth; cloth, timber, powder coated

Dimensions

Variable

steel construction.

Materials:

Woollen cloth, faux leather, 25 count ‘Lugana’ even

6 Leaflet holder’

weave cotton cloth, 14 count ‘Aida’, grosgrain ribbon,

Date: 2013

timber, powder coated steel, plaster, sisal

Dimensions

Process:

Cross stitch embroidery; cloth, timber and metal con

Materials:

Laminate, timber, aluminium, foam grip.

struction, plaster dipped sisal

Process:

Timber and aluminium construction.

L25cm x W16cm x D4cm

3.‘Shelf’ Date: 2013

7.‘Catalogue’ brochure designed in collaboration with Lawn Creative design

Dimensions

L25cm x W16cm x D4cm

practice, Liverpool with invited essay by Dr Antoinette McKane, Post-Doctoral

Materials:

Cotton shirting, 25 count ‘Lugana’ evenweave cotton

Teaching Fellow, Museum and Heritage Studies, Liverpool Hope University.

cloth, stranded cotton thread, timber, powder coated

steel, plaster, sisal

8. Forthcoming: Exhibition review Rhiannon Williams, Textile, The Journal of Cloth

Process:

Cross stitch embroidery; cloth, timber and metal con

and Culture, Bloomsbury.

struction, plaster dipped sisal.

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Cloth and Memory {2} component configuration 23913-CH22LB

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Group exhibition, curated by Lesley Millar, June Hill and Jennifer Hallam.

Key points of reference that inform the research and development of the studio enquiry are tensions between stasis/mobility, proximity/distance, stability/instability

Salts Mill, Saltaire, 18 Aug – 1 Nov 2013

that are potentially evoked through the experiential encounter. Arguably, these paradoxical conditions are fundamental to the constitution of the precarious

Cloth and Memory {2} is a site-specific exhibition located in the UNESCO World

modern subject and particularly evident in the workings of heritage and memory.

Heritage Site: Salts Mill, in Saltaire, West Yorkshire. The exhibition took place in

They are also the founding contradictions of cloth which arguably functions as an

the original Spinning Room not usually open to the public, which at 168m x 16m,

exemplary metaphor and medium through which to articulate the complex muta-

when first built was thought to be the largest industrial room in the world. An

bility of our contemporary existence.

international group of artists were invited to visit Salts in order to propose work as a response to the site. From these proposals 23 artists were selected: 14 from the

Drawing on Briony Fer’s analysis of the paradoxical subjective encounter evoked

UK, 7 from Japan, 1 from Germany, 1 from Norway, representing emerging, early

through the installational tableau, my intention for the exhibition is to establish a

career and established artists.

correspondence between more rigid structural frameworks and movable curtains that offer a variety of perspectival positions and a series of continually fluctuat-

A 119 page full colour publication and website accompanied the exhibition and

ing frames. Staged within these structural frameworks are smaller elements that

included a statement about my component configuration Mutable Frame of Ref-

ambiguously reference the history of Salts Mill and textile production as well as

erence which can be found here:

the wider everyday functional and social conventions of textile through which we

For more information see:

physically and psychologically negotiate our relationship with the world.

http://www.clothandmemory.com/ Offering a succession of fragmented tableaux, the aim is to maintain a productive Project overview:

tension between subjective attachment and detachment. On the one hand, the

Mutable Frame of Reference (component configuration 18813-BD183LA)

hope is to entice the viewer and evoke a heightened sensory awareness through

Extending PhD enquiry, Mutable Frame of Reference (component configuration

the affective material sensuality and associative resonances of the work. Yet at

18813-BD183LA) provides an opportunity for reflection on models of subjectivity

the same time that the work facilitates a process of connectivity, the intention is

and the processes of attachment and detachment that are problematised through

to unsettle seeming stability through the staged artifice, semantic ambiguity, and

the intermediary agency of textile in relation to the framing (and reframing) of

fluctuating frameworks that physically and psychologically distance the viewer

memory and heritage.

and resist subjective cohesion.

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The Salts Mill exhibition provides an opportunity for reflection on models of sub-

I would suggest that there are clear correlations here with the complex character-

jectivity and the processes of attachment and detachment that are problematised

istics of cloth.

through the intermediary agency of textile in relation to the framing (and reframing) of memory and heritage.

Thinking about the inherent contradictions that are evoked by the mutability of both cloth and memory, my intention for the exhibition is to establish a corre-

Maxine Bristow – Cloth and Memory {2} Catalogue Statement

spondence between more rigid structural frameworks and a series of curtains that provide a series of fluid fluctuating frames. Staged within these structural frame-

Key points of reference for the development of the work are tensions between

works are smaller elements that ambiguously reference both the specific history

stasis/mobility, proximity/distance, stability/instability that are potentially evoked

of Salts Mill and the wider everyday functional and social conventions of textile

through the experiential encounter. These paradoxical conditions are fundamental

through which we physically and psychologically connect with the world.

to the constitution of the precarious modern subject and particularly evident in the workings of heritage and memory. On the one hand memory and heritage (as

Offering a succession of fragmented tableaux, the aim is to maintain a productive

a materialisation of collective memory) provide a sense of continuity and stability.

tension between subjective attachment and detachment. On the one hand, the

As a way in which we make sense of ourselves in the present through reference

hope is to entice the viewer and evoke a heightened sensory awareness through

the past, they are important in the construction and representation of identity

the affective material sensuality and associative resonances of the work. Yet at

providing a sense of individual and social coherence in an ever-changing world. In

the same time that the work facilitates a process of connectivity, the intention is

its preservation and framing of the past, memory and heritage can evoke nos-

to unsettle seeming stability through the staged artifice, semantic ambiguity, and

talgia for coherence and a unifying narrative of belonging. However, countering

fluctuating frameworks that physically and psychologically distance the viewer

such constructs of seeming stability and continuity is the acknowledged mutabil-

and resist subjective cohesion.

ity and contingency of heritage and memory. Both heritage and memory make ‘selective use of the past for contemporary purposes’1; continually shaped by

1.

Ashworth and Graham, 2005, p7, cited by Dowell, S, (2008) ‘Heritage,

concerns and contexts of the present, they are fluid and dynamic, ever open to

Memory and Identity’. In: Graham, B.J. and Howard, P. The Ashgate Research

contestation and unable to provide us with stable meanings or unitary views of

Companion to Heritage and Identity. Aldershot, Burlington: Ashgate Publishing

the past. As an alternative to the implied objective singular authority of ‘official’

Limited. p37.

history, memory is conceived as multiple, diverse, mutable, and contradictory.

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List of project outputs: 1.Mutable Frame of Reference Date:

2013

Dimensions Variable Materials:

Timber, galvanised steel, aluminium, wire rope, felted

woollen cloth, cotton cloth, faux leather, 25 count ‘Lugana’

evenweave cotton cloth, stranded cotton thread, grosgrain

ribbon, leather, plaster, sisal.

Process: Cloth, timber, steel construction; upholstery; wood

turning; cross stitch embroidery.

2.

Catalogue statement

3.

Seminar contribution: ‘Cloth and the translation of memory’,

26.10.13

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