Laundry Project,/ update

For the laundry project I started to experiment with stains on clothes, going round the boundary of the stain with stitches and in a sense capturing the stain before washing it off. Working with a trace of a person was very interesting, engaging with something that happened momentarily. I began to be too focused on a stain and perhaps started to be closed minded about other opportunities and allowing my work to evolve. These are some of the images of work I did where I engaged with stains on clothes.

 

 

Pair of jeans with dirt stains, perhaps
by walking in the mud in the park

A woman's shirt with green stains,
possibly a green marker? 

 

Perhaps I should have not cut out the rest of the clothes out around the circle but left the whole piece of clothing intact for people to understand what it is. With the embroidery hoop around the spot which I worked with it looks crafty and the hoop acts as a boundary which I don't like.

 

Later I found a tea stained tablecloth which I also started to stitch but in a different way, experimenting with colour and stitches. Something about stitching became very appealing I think this is because it is very time consuming and completely different with the sudden stains that I engage with. By spending time on the stains they become meaningful in a way.

 

 

For some reason I could not get away from stitching stains, I felt addicted every time I saw a new stain on fabric. I even found an old dustsheet with paint stains on that I started to work on also.

 

 

 

 

 Again everything that I tried was with the stains and slowly I began to realize that I need to keep an open mind and try and do something else. For example I forgot that I was interested in stories, whether it be the stains or the sentimental things that are very important to the owner. 

 

 

Consider:

-capturing moments in a different way

-Recording stories

-taking clothes apart

stitching into water soluble fabric?

 

~Ev

British Art Show 8 / in relation to the Laundry Site Intervention

About the exhibition

The British Art Show provides a vital overview of the most exciting contemporary art produced in the UK. Organised by Hayward Touring, this multi-venue exhibition is presented every five years in four different cities across the country.

 

The curators of British Art Show 8, Anna Colin and Lydia Yee, have selected the work of 42 artists who have made a significant contribution to contemporary art in the UK over the past five years. The result is a wide-ranging exhibition that encompasses performance, film, sculpture, installation and painting and design. Twenty-six of the 42 artists have produced new works for the exhibition, making this the most ambitious British Art Show to date.

 

A central concern of British Art Show 8 is the changing role and status of the physical object in an increasingly digital age. While some artists engage with this question through traditional craft-based techniques, others experiment with modes of industrial production. As the curators comment, ‘We were particularly interested in the rereading of objects by artists and other contemporary thinkers as active agents, generative entities, mutating forms and networked realities.’

 

http://britishartshow8.com/page/about-exhibition-1599

 

 

I went to see this show in Leeds where it will be until 10th January 2016, before moving to Edinburgh and so on. I found that one artist stood out to me the most.

 

As you walk in into the art gallery and up the staircase you could see a big piece of work hanging in the middle, dominating the space which I loved and at the same time looked isolated form the rest which wasn't bad either.  



Jessica Warboys - Sea Paintings
 

Jessica Warboys works across painting, performance, film and sculpture. In her series of Sea Paintings Warboys explores the connection between painting and performance. To make these large-scale works the artist submerges a damp, folded canvas scattered with coloured pigments into the sea, and allows the movement of the waves to ‘paint’ the canvas.

I love how she uses the sea to leave a trace on the canvas. She captures the natural through performance which you don't necessarily see but you are left with the canvas to see the movements of water and the process. Reminds me a little bit of Jackson Pollock in the sense of movement, performance and horizontality. However Pollock draws with paint and captures the movement through it and Warboys concentrates in my opinion on trace and the natural interaction. Both however focus on the process enormously and yet visually both Pollock's and Warboy's work is very appealing as though they found a balance between visual and the performative process.

 

“I am not concerned with how the tableau looks or appears as I make a sea painting, but with the result or record of the process."

Jessica Warboys

 

 

 

For me the strength of this work lies in the process and I absolutely love it. The canvases capture not just the movement of water and the Warboys performance but also capture the history and memory of water so every canvas is unique and cannot be replicated. The interaction of the artist and the water with canvas and pigment is a moment in time experience which I try and explore myself. Not only creating something but through the process being involved with it and capturing the moment that will be felt from the artwork.

 

At the moment for the Laundry Site Intervention I am looking at old clothes that still have traces and memory of the owner, the smell, the imperfections etc. Thread by thread I am taking a wool cardigan apart that I have found in the charity shop. Literally picking away at its history that I don't know but engage with through the threads that still hold the memory. By picking at the threads over a long period of time through repetition I try to go backwards in time to the point that the cardigan becomes a ball of thread where it began. Although I don't know the memories and the experiences that this cardigan with the owner went through, I try to grasp the ungraspable through physical repetitive process. I don't need to know the stories for them to be important, engaging with the traces of them stories is enough for me. 

 

~Ev