Stripped Bare Sculptures

These are the actual wire figures that I made, decided not to stuff with hair, and then used to make the photograms which were in the Stripped Bare post. Well, some of them were used for that series, but there are probably 10-20 of them that exist just as sculptures. I did make them with the intention of making the hair dolls, which is why some have limbs sticking out at odd angles in an attempt to make them unique. These ones are all shorter than 30cm.







Trying for different finishes, I painted some of the figures silver and gold. Perfect Christmas tree ornaments! Actually, the coloured paint preceded the use of hair with these sculptures. The hair came about when I was thinking of other things to do with the wire, i.e. what to put on the wire, or over it, or inside it. I'll fish out old photos and make a separate post of those (very old) works.

Entanglement

Coming up on Wednesday, October 15 is the opening of Entanglement at the Manningham Gallery in Doncaster, Victoria. I won't be able to make it to the opening, but if you're down that way, pop in and have a look. It's an exhibition of textiles and glass. Here's the invitation, and below that are images of my work, plus an excerpt from my book regarding that series of work.


The other artists in the show are Cheryl Clark Thornton, Des Fankhauser, Hilary Green and Rachel Hine, Jennifer King, Susan Reddrop, George Aslanis, Brook Morgan, Nadia Mercuri, Amy Cornall, Yhonnie Scarce, Kelly Leonard, Graeme Orridge, Sara Lindsay, Ruth McCallum-Howell, Ilka White and Bethany Wheeler. Kelly Leonard and Hilary Green are both also in Momentum: The 18th Tamworth Fibre Textile Biennial.

This first image is of the installation as I imagined it, and as I wrote about in my book. This hang was never an exhibition, though. It was just set up to be photographed. The gallery space where I had my MFA grad. show didn't have the ideal configuration to set up the installation as I envisioned it. The whole work is called I Am Because We Are, but only 4 of the long, coloured panels will be in the Entanglement show.


This is a side shot, and only possible because of the movable walls in the gallery I used for the shoot. The pink, purple, and white panels in this shot are in the show.


The pale blue panel is the 4th work in Entanglement.



This is a series of detailed shots of the 4 panels:







Below is my contribution to the catalogue. I'm not sure how much will be used. It's a conflation of different parts of my book. I thought this work particularly apt for the theme of Entanglement because of the connections that I was drawing between the individual and the group, and the way the weaving process indissolubly joins the materials together.

I AM BECAUSE WE ARE

“When René Descartes said I think therefore I am, he had stumbled across a profound philosophical truth. But, of course, it was not the whole truth, and when taken alone it rings of self-sufficiency and individualism. For a more complete understanding of the self I draw on the wisdom of an African proverb: I am because we are. The emphasis here is on our interdependence and connectedness. Our very existence depends upon those around us, and the people in our lives shape who we become.”

Matt Lawrence, Like a Splinter in the Mind: The Philosophy Behind the Matrix Trilogy

When I read this quote, it helped to clarify ideas that I had been working with in my art practice. I had been collecting hair from people, and using it as a metonymic representation of the donors. I was assembling groups from these individuals, with the group and the individual being equally important. I was including the names of the donors so that they were known, distinct individuals and not an anonymous mass. The donated hair was being spun and woven, and I was creating groups that were indissolubly joined together. These woven forms were an embodiment of the metaphor of “the fabric of society.” The proverb mentioned above encapsulated the concerns that I had - the idea that I am because we are - and provided the title for an installation, and for my book.

I Am Because We Are, 2004-06, an installation of woven forms all made from donated socks, developed out of the hair weaving works. It began with the desire to collect something from people that could be used to represent them, while continuing to explore the relationship between the individual and the group. I was happy with the textiles I had made from hair, but I was frustrated at the necessarily small scale (because of the amounts of hair I was able to collect). I needed a material that would enable me to get more participants and make pieces on a larger scale. I was familiar with art works that used clothing as a metaphor for human beings, so that was a possibility, but I also wanted to avoid clichés. I decided to solicit for socks because almost everyone has them, most people have some that they want to get rid of (for example, odd socks or socks with holes), and they’re small and easy to post. I sent out emails; advertised at university; posted ads in a number of magazines, bulletin boards and craft groups; sent letters to journalists, art world people, politicians and everyone in New South Wales with the surname ‘Love’. I also badgered every friend and acquaintance as well as people at art openings. In all I had around 350 people donate socks to me, but the quantity of socks numbered in the thousands, as some people took the opportunity to clear out their sock drawers.

In order to make this piece, I had to cut the socks into strips before weaving them. This is a standard technique for making rag rugs, but the textiles I produced were for exhibition and not for utilitarian use, so didn’t need to be as sturdy. The fabric I produced is a twill where the weft threads are the focus and the warp threads are only of structural importance. This also allowed me to weave ribbons with the donors names typed on them into the fabric. The first part of the installation I made was an abstracted kimono using only white socks. I then made black panels to go behind the kimono and a rug to go on the floor. By this stage I had been researching memorials, so the form of the installation began to mimic that of a memorial. I had in mind a war memorial with panels on the walls and a statue of a soldier at the far end of a corridor. In my installation, the series of woven wall panels form a corridor leading through to the kimono. The socks, like the hair in my earlier weavings, are used as signifiers of the people who have donated them.

Artwork details

Title: I Am Because We Are

Materials: Socks, cotton, polyester ribbon, on wooden frame

Dimensions: 200x50cm

Price: $1000 each

Stripped Bare

This post is devoted to a series of work that I produced in 2001 and 2002 called Stripped Bare. I had been working with wire figures for a number of years (see this post), and decided to explore a 2-D version of these figures. In the beginning all the "dolls" were stuffed with hair, but I decided to exhibit some with just the wire. The shadows cast on the wall became part of the work, and this led to me thinking of doing photograms of them. The white figures on black are the photograms of the sculptures, and the black figures on white are the photograms of the photograms. I framed the two images from each work together for contrast.





Having obtained a "drawing" of the figures, I decided to work with photocopy "static" to get more texture in the images. I used 3rd, 4th or 5th generation photocopies and printed them on rag paper to simulate an intaglio print.





I also continued photocopying each image until it became a blob of ink. I pinned all the photocopies to the wall so that an original image slowly got darker and darker, then swapped to the next darkened image and went back in steps until I reached its original image.




I had also made a number of works with hair boxes so made photograms from variations of those.








I quite liked these red/pink variations but have never exhibited them.

Off the Wall again

I posted a while back a rejection from Off the Wall, a part of Art Sydney that allows emerging artists a chance to show their work. They've put images from the rejected artists on their site. It's now possible to see the people who were selected as well as those who weren't. My image is on this page. You can see the variety in the work they've chosen, but it's difficult to see much difference between those selected and those rejected. And it's so depressing to see so much art by so many artists! It's even more depressing seeing really bad art by really successful people (not at this site, but generally in the galleries and museums!). Still, that's the art world, I guess. Like it or lump it...

Hair works

I'm still working my way through a pile of existing images that I made webready a couple of years ago when I still had my website, but never got around to adding. Some of the images are of questionable quality and I'm not sure why that is. A bad batch... All the image in this post are works made with human hair. It's a material I've used a lot, and will continue to use in the future. It has lots of material potential, as well as conceptual ones. I'll probably eventually recycle some of my BFA Honours paper here; it was all about hair and its meanings.

This first image is not really a work, it was just a filler for a show I had at UNSW in 2002. I had collected hair from 100+ people to make paper, and I exhibited the bags with the remaining hair, and some people's photos.


This is one of the earliest works I made with hair. I was using a lot of wire at the time, and was looking for things to stuff in these wire shapes, or to put around the outside. The wire's very messy, and there's no order to the colours. As with a lot of my work, things start off chaotically, but eventually firm up and become neat and tidy. This was called The Muses, I think, and was part of the first group show I was in, Crack, at PCL Exhibitionists in 1998.



This is how they ended up: less wire; wire coated in ink and acrylic medium to give support and contrast; uniformity of colour; better photography. This is The Blonde Leading the Blonde, from 2002, and was exhibited in my Honour's year graduation show at COFA.



Also from my Honour's year grad. show was this work, As Above, So Below. The one above is about 15cm square. The one below is about 2m wide and 1.5m high. I thought I should at least make one really large work. There is a close-up below. As you can tell, my skills at colour matching are not that great! Each block is the size of a cigarette packet.


Below is an installation shot from the Sculpture 03 show at PCL. The colour here is pretty lifelike. Below the large panel I've put an installation of hair figures. As I wrote in an earlier post, these dolls have been in a number of shows, each with a different arrangement, and usually a different name. I can't remember what I called them in this show. I'll have to check my archives.



Here's another installation shot from the same show. On the right hand side are three framed dolls. Each has a piece of hand-made paper with a person's hair in it, and that same person's hair is in the doll. They are three portraits: Bob Hunt, Myra Thurner, and Careen Furner.



This is Myra Thurner.


I can't tell which is which of the following two as they both had long dark hair. One is called Bob Hunt, and the other Careen Furner.



This is a work that has never been exhibited as I never thought it worthy! It's a hair doll that has been woven into a bag. I made a double-woven form, put the doll inside while it was still on the loom, then wove up the top. It didn't really speak to me. It was a spin on the idea of cages that I had been working with for a number of years, but it doesn't have the power of a metal "cage".


This was similar to the dolls-on-paper works above, but I used the boxes, and also used anonymous hair. There are two of these, with different-sized boxes, and both called Group Portrait. Also from 2002, I think.



These are two of the earliest hair weavings I did. I'll have a separate post at some point in the future. The first one is the very first I ever made. It's very chunky because I didn't know how to make the hair into a yarn that would stay together other than making it really thick, like a dreadlock. This is called Human, All-Too Human, and is from 2000, maybe 1999. It's about 50cm wide, and nearly 200cm long. It can be seen at the Planet store on Commonwealth St, Surry Hills.



I think this was the third weaving I made. Not a great photo, but you can see that the yarn is much thinner, making a much finer piece of textile. This work is called After Me No Lover But Death Will Know You, and was originally installed along a corridor wall with names of WWII concentration camps leading up to it. One of many works I've made dealing with the Holocaust. This piece will be going to Beijing next month for a show in November. It's called From Lausanne to Beijing: The 5th International Fiber Art Biennale. It's about 13cm wide, and about 200cm long. The hair, like in the work above, and all of the works I first made with hair, is from anonymous people all mixed together. The conceptual concerns were about groups that de-emphasised the individual, and reflected the importance and dominance of the group. Since then my work has tended to show the individual as part of a group, but not subsumed within it.