vanity weaves

Over a month already since the last weekly post…  Time is a fierce adversary!   Making up for it now with a brand new film of the newly restored weaving time machines. Commissioned privately over a year ago, I teamed up with the genial Marcelo Barbosa to develop these sculptures.

Hacking into old IKEA lampshades, as well as various basketry items originally collected for Hybrid Basketry, the woven capsules rotate inside one another and generate light. They measure time, weaving light and motion in a continuous cycle. Think of them as inverted kaleidoscopes, projecting light patterns onto their surroundings.  This kinetic playfulness is double edged however. The light is trapped in the complex intertwined patterns of the weave and you’ll notice a skull at the centre of one of the capsules. The sculptures are vanitas, reminding us that with each rotation we are irremediably closer to death. All light creates shade.

Only while writing this am I reminded of Come Back, an equally dark and mysterious light installation I created at St Pancras Chambers for the exhibition Shine curated by Up Projects, a London based arts organisation who are soon to celebrate their 10^th anniversary. Come Back consisted of a rotating projection in a darkened room spelling the words that make up it’s title and could only be seen from the outside through a half opened door.  It’s strange to realise how creative thoughts, something I've referred to in my previous post on this blog, tend to come round in circles.

stationery hacks: assembled baskets

There’s a flurry of activities at the studio at the moment as I am preparing for two new shows opening next week. One is at Siobhan Davies Studios (more info on this in my next post), the other a group exhibition of staff teaching on textiles and jewellery courses at Morley College. The college is a long established adult education centre near Waterloo. I have been teaching there for over ten year now, less than 10 days a year on average, but I love it. The age of my learners ranges from 18 to 80, and the breadth of experience amongst the group makes for the most interesting sessions.

The college has a gallery and it is in this space that I will be exhibiting. Their last show which I didn’t spend enough time at was on the influence of Cornelius Cardew, who taught an experimental music class at the college in the 60s, amongst a list of other illustrious figures such Gustav Holst and Benjamin Britten.

My contribution to the exhibition will consist of three assembled baskets. Made out of pencils, felt tips and biros, each of these were constructed on a piece of A4 paper and have thus produced a drawing each, a record of their own creation. I will be exhibiting these alongside the baskets. I produced a similar piece last year that was included in the assembled basketry chapter of Practical Basketry Techniques (pg 140), and was inspiration for the two assembly projects illustrated in the book. Outcomes of these are posted below.

ad hoc doilies

The Crafts Council approached me the week before Xmas asking me to submit a piece for their collection. Rather than choose something I had already made, I thought I’d develop a new piece for them. Knowing they are interested in adding to their textile collection, I thought I’d make use of my knowledge of lace making and combine this with some assemblage processes using materials I have at hand at the studio. After a few days work, I ended up working out how to make doilies out of paper clips. Useless if used as they are meant to be - it will be the doily not the pot that will scratch the surface of your precious piece of furniture - they are simply to be appreciated for their aesthetic value…

To make these, I reinterpreted bobbin lace making technique to suit working with the clips - I've used a wooden board and nails instead of a pillow and pins to do this. Thinking about it now, I had in mind the work of Joep Verhoeven who I met during the Sydney Design Festival last August, when exhibiting in the Love Lace exhibition. Joep create architectural sized pieces using bobbin lace technique and wire much in the same way I have with hammer, nails and a jig. I love this misappropriation and reinvention with processes and materials. To understand something better, you often have to step away from it to take a fresher look at it, and in this way allow for innovation.

I relied on this strategy when working on the Hybrid Basketry project at Origin Craft Fair in 2009, which resulted in the commissioning of the Practical Basketry Techniques publication mentioned in an earlier post. Visitors at the fair were asked to deconstruct a basket in order to remake something, and in doing so, find something out about basketry and related techniques of making.

This ‘hybrid’ a approach to making, and the notion of re-using, appropriation, or even ‘hacking’, is nothing new of course. It has been a characteristic of design and art practice for 20 years at least. Designers such as Ron Arad and Jasper Morrison took up the ready made cause in the early 90s. Re-use and re-make ethics were promoted by Tom Dixon as well as Renny Ramakers and Gijs Bakker from Droog Design amongst many others. Choosing to re-use, whether out of necessity or not, teaches you to be resourceful. The theorist Charles Jencks coined the term ‘Adhocism’ in the 60s to describe “using an available system or dealing with and existing situation in a new way to solve a problem quickly and efficiently…a method of creation relying particularly on resources which are ready to hand”. I have a slight regret that this way of thinking was not featured more heavily in projects for the book mentioned above. No matter, the beauty of collaboration (co-authorship in this case) is the opportunity to find out something new and be surprised at the resulting outcome of your joint efforts.

beach holiday basket

The weather has turned really cold lately. Bright blue and cloudless wintery skies has meant the temperature has dropped dramatically in London, and it has made me long for hot summer days. Preoccupied by this, I dug out the pictures of the tropical island I made a while back during my show at the Origin craft fair in 2009. The piece was coiled using the straw and coloured string from an old beach mat, and its fabric edging for making the palm trees. For full instructions on how to make this and help you keep your spirits up during this cold spell, click here. Warm thoughts...