Sock rope

In this post I'm showing a work which I proposed as an exhibition in Sculpture by the Sea. It was rejected by SbtS, so I thought I'd use this to reiterate the philosophy of this blog. I'm not trying to show my best work here, or the most successful, or my favourite; I'm showing ALL my work. I've destroyed some past work not because I'm embarrassed by it, or because it might weaken my brand, but because I haven't had enough space to store everything. I'm the artist I am today because of the evolution of my work, because of the work I've made as well as the work I haven't made, the artistic dead-ends, and the works that have sold and gone to appreciative homes. I'm also quite happy for someone to look at some work and say, "Meh, I don't like it," or even, "That's terrible!" I'm not editing the work, just presenting. I'm trying for an autobiographical display, rather than an aesthetic one.

So, given that caveat, what's this work all about? Part of the reason this was rejected is because it's not that well thought out. I'd been collecting socks from people for part of my MFA (click on the Socks link at the end of the post for various sock works), and still had hundreds on hand after making the work. This was an attempt to find some way of using them up. I've plaited them into a giant braid (or have I braided them into a giant plait?). The idea was that this braid would encircle Marks Park at Bondi, one of the locations for Sculpture by the Sea. I guess part of the idea was that these were socks which people had been walking in which were now to be used to delineate a walking space. Or something. I really didn't think it through too well. And the presentation wasn't that great. How was it to be held down? What would happen when it rained? Would people trip over it? I'm still hoping that I can resurrect the idea of the sock rope at some point in the future, not for this location, but in some other form, maybe a lot of shorter ropes hanging from a ceiling? The rope is chunky and colourful, but I'm not really sure what it would mean, which is why I'm blocked with the idea!

I think I stole the idea from Janine Antoni. At the end of the images of my work are two photos of Antoni's work Moor. Here's an excerpt from my book about her work:

Janine Antoni has also used items donated by individuals, but her work is concerned with the individual and the group. Antoni’s Moor, 2001, is a rope made from objects that family and friends had donated to her, all of which were listed during the exhibition. The items include
clothing, hair, Christmas lights, extension cords, towels, etc. Antoni and her assistants cut the items into strips, twisted them, then let strands of these materials twist back onto each other to create a thick rope. The work is a metaphor for connectedness. Antoni says, “A rope is an umbilical cord – it’s something that connects two things. Which, sort of, is what Moor is about. It’s about all these people, you know, my life sort of connecting all these people. The idea was to take all these very different materials, but also lives, and sort of bring them together through the rope-making process.”

In the book that was produced in conjunction with the installation, Antoni lists all the items that are in the rope, to whom they belonged, and a narrative around the object if the donor provided one:

Melissa’s dental floss is used as whipping to secure the beginning of the
rope and it is clasping Danielle’s red reversible jacket, which is black on
the other side and which her roommate Katrin from Germany gave to
her, and she never really wore the jacket and feels like it drifted into her
life the same way that Katrin did and Danielle’s jacket is entwined with a
green t-shirt of Pat’s that “could be up to fifteen years old and I have
worn it all that time so that it was almost completely worn away, and I
could not bear to part with it because it had made it so far” and Pat’s tshirt
is entwined with Glenn’s brown sweater from Old Navy that got
stretched out and “nothing from that store ever lasts” and Glenn’s
sweater is entwined with his friend Byron’s striped velour ‘Hang Ten’ shirt
and Byron is in many ways stuck in the seventies and he wants to be a
surfer and Byron’s shirt is entwined with his wife Lisa’s studio jeans worn
while making her paintings…

Moor not only “extract[s] the poetry that lies latent in all material,” but also shows the connectedness of humanity that has been my concern in I Am Because We Are. All people, regardless of how poor they may be, have some objects, even if only their clothing, that can be used to represent them.

















Janine Antoni's work Moor:



I also recently found this last image. It's an installation by Janice Appleton called there is something I need to tell you. I don't know anything about it other than this image, but it looks like a rope made of clothes connects these two outfits.