Ilkestone County Law Courts 1975 p84–85
Charlemagne 1978 p3, 43
Crayola for Lucinda Childs 1980 p87
White Crayola 1978 p43, 88
In my second year at Manchester we had a ‘live’ commissioning opportunity to design a work for a new Law Court Building in llkestone, Derbyshire. I submitted two proposals and was ultimately asked to make both although neither was installed until 1995–6. The most radical work involved the recycling of material from the soon to be demolished buildings on the proposed site into the new build. My plan was to mark and crate sections of wall; this would be reconfigured and inset at a later date into the new building. I liked the idea of retaining a memory of the earlier buildings, a frisson of the old and new. On top of this broken collage of brick, wood and stone would float several stitched panels. Retrospectively the sample is noteworthy, as it marks the first deployment of the wooden grid structure: a direction I wouldn’t pursue seriously until 1976. The sample was made at home, in many ways the most interesting experimentation was completed away from college; I always had two collections of work referred to as ‘my work’ and ‘college work’: even then I didn’t like any accountability to others.
Charlemagne is an important work on several levels. It was made in 1978 for the 3rd International Exhibition of Miniature Textiles at the old British Crafts Centre on Earlham Street. The concept for the show was Ann Sutton’s (since appropriated many times) and nothing could be submitted over 30cm in any direction. It toured extensively and years later I’d still meet people from all over the world that became aware of my work because of that inclusion. Charlemagne was first and foremost my ambassador, if only pieces could talk on their return. The title is a quiet allusion to a 1954 Robert Rauschenberg combine called Charlene. I’ve loved this painting all my life since I first came across it in the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Early Rauschenberg was for me a visceral introduction to a use of cloth that was decidedly non-decorative. As a student I was desperate to find something in cloth that I could relate to, textiles in the early 70s was a very prettified culture. I still think we need to see more edgy textiles, work that steps outside the New Age, pleasant, feel of so much work. Compositionally, Charlemagne makes reference to that most primal of textile structural units: warp and weft. I realized that if I substituted strips of painted and collaged wood for thread, then the structural possibilities of the grid increased expediently. I could work with and recycle a far greater range of materials, above all the work looked tougher and more robust. Charlemagne has continued to work its magic appearing in many books over the years, including Peter Dormer’s 1997 The Culture of Craft.
On a visit to New York in 1980 I first heard Einstein on the Beach by Phillip Glass, a five-hour opera without a conventional plot, arias or scenes. Short-spoken texts are set against repetitive electronic keyboard rhythms played at frenetic speed. My works of this period were an attempt to reflect an aspect of that musical experience. In Crayola for Lucinda Childs, additive and subtractive layers of paper, colour and fabric are built up, obscured and revealed to expose a random sense of their original meaning. The rhythmic base is provided by an overlaid stitched pulse of thread that runs throughout the whole work. The construction allows the viewer to jump between an awareness of detail and whole, between order and chaos. The collaged material provides additional clues, which in turn evoke their own associations. The early music of Philip Glass is often referred to as ‘pattern music’ for its reiteration of musical phrases such as motifs, figures, and cells within a hypnotic steady pulse, all of which I was trying to visually replicate in my own work at this period. Incidentally, the Red Krayola were a mid 1960s avant-garde, psychedelic band from Houston, Texas who were made to change their name from Crayola to Krayola for legal reasons. Crayola became a title prefix for a number of my earlier pieces. It quietly referenced art materials, music and a certain spirit of chaotic freeform adventure. I always had a weakness for a trippy title.
Of all the early pieces the White Crayola is the one I wished I’d never sold, I still miss it. There are pieces that push open doors; they contain within their make-up several potential new directions. It’s as if you can keep returning to the source of the work and mine another exciting direction from a never-ending seam. I spent a long time with the White Crayola. It’s a laminate of paper, thread and paint rhythmically laid one on top of another. The comic book papers had all but replaced the earlier thread lines. Paper strips were pinned on the surface of the mesh until I achieved a compositional logic that sufficed. As with all of the works of this period the Holy Trinity of ideas were depth, translucency and structure. I wanted to build a surface; the parallel in my mind was between the cellular creation of organic matter and the creation of a fabric surface. They were both formed from the multiplication and interconnectivity of small units or cells. It’s also worth remembering that during this period felt and papermaking had been introduced into the Textile course at Goldsmiths where I then taught. What made this period so educationally exciting was the absence of any ‘road map’. Both staff and students were collectively involved in challenging and extending our understanding of what constituted a contemporary textile. Papermaking and felt were introduced via the experimentation of the students; we influenced and supported each other. It would not be uncommon to see any number of burnt out Moulinex tabletop blenders littering the corridors.
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