Exhibition: Powerhouse Museum - Love Lace

The Powerhouse Museum's  Love Lace exhibition is one that I have been looking forward to for some time. Fingers crossed that the next trip north allows enough time to contemplate the work in this thoroughly. From the Powerhouse statement:


Lace offers the mystery of concealment and the subtle interplay of space, light and shadows. Its layering can enhance the human body and create alluring effects in interior design and architecture. Though lace is usually associated with textiles, curator Lindie Ward broadened the definition of lace to include any ‘openwork structure whose pattern of spaces is as important as the solid areas’.


Below the break are my picks.*

Joy Buttress. Skin Reveals Skin. 430 x 150 x 100 mm, Pair of opera gloves: laser cut and machine-stitched kid leather.

‘Nottingham played a central role in the world lace trade from 1760 onwards... I have been inspired by a particular portfolio in the school’s archive that was produced in Plauen, Germany, and shown at the Great Exhibition in Brussels 1910. It contains 24 plates of designs inspired by organic forms found in flora and fauna. The complex and sophisticated construction of lace creates a transparency, offering a relationship with both skin (the body) and pattern, my work aims to explore the interaction of lace with the body... Each glove explores the sensitivity and sensuous nature of the gloved hand through historical motifs, digital laser technology and hand stitch.’

Marita Macklin. Aspergillus. 450 x 1450 (diam) mm, Installation: free-motion machine embroidery, bush dye and hand embroidery on a variety of materials including muslin, organza and netting      

‘We live in a world that has a hidden world within it. A world that is so small it cannot be seen with the naked eye. Only through advanced technology can we see the tiny, fragile forms of the microscopic organisms that inhabit this miniature world. I have created sculptural forms with repetitive textures and motifs based on the most common elements shared by microbes, in particular, those that inhabit and infect the human body.’

Helen Pynor. Untitled (uterus urinary). 290 x 360 X 200, Knitted human hair.

‘In my work I explore the complex dialogues between biological and cultural processes. I’m interested in the registration and transmission of personal and cultural experience in the biological body, and importantly, in the active collaboration and participation of the biological in this process at cellular and physiological levels. In my hair works I’ve knitted together single strands of human hair to form large and small-scale sculptures. These strands were grown by women in a distant country and are now twisted into complex forms by me, entangling bodies, time, memory and place... seen from a distance the works become transparent and ghost-like, entering other in-between spaces of past and present, flesh and memory, beauty and repulsion, living and dead.’

Anneliese Vobis. Patterns of Frost. 250 x 250 x 250 mm, Soft sculpture: heat-treated felt and thread.

'I am concerned with the concepts of change and transience. As Hegel said, ‘it is the process of change which makes evolution possible’.The interrelation of organisms in ecosystems serves as a starting point for intense scientific-related research. My biomorphic-shaped projects explore the metamorphic cycles that organisms undergo in nature. My work reflects natural processes like melting, crystallisation and growth.’

Lenka Suchanek.  Are We Made of Lace? 380 x 380 mm (each), Panels (6): bobbin lace using enamelled copper wire on acrylic panels.

‘Recently, I came across electron microscope images and it felt like finding the missing piece of a puzzle. The images of cell structures looked exactly like lace. Plants, sea plankton, humans … all made from a primordial lace that cannot be seen with unaided eye, but it pervades everything. We live in an awesome lace world.'

* Picks are completely based on a bias relating to the microscopic, intimately worn articles of clothing, disgust surrounding shed body particles like skin and hair, and tenuous forms.  

Practitioner: Sarah Kate Burgess

Adorn Everyday  is the brainchild of Sarah Kate Burgess, whose playful approach to design has unleashed these very inviting looking treats:

"The Cup as Ring series arose from the assertion that everyday objects, (in this case tea cups, spoons and other plastic objects), are designed as ornaments for the human body.  Found tea cups of melamine plastic, porcelain, stoneware, and glass were cut and altered to highlight the wearability built into each handle. This work seeks to reclaim the everyday.  My hope is that through common materials and simple techniques, viewers will become reengaged with familiar objects that have become overlooked, bringing enchantment back to our daily life."

Cloud, Colander, Radiator

Star, Strainer, Scoop

The Do It Yourself - Ring series comes in downloadable, printable pdf form. 

"Jewelry anticipates a collaboration between wearer and maker.  The act of wearing activates jewelry. Questions of authorship and value led me to make the Do it Yourself Rings series.  Often the preciousness of an object, especially jewelry, has little to do with its market value. I have designed these rings to be made from an inexpensive and fragile material-paper. The preciousness of these rings will come from the experience of making them, and from your own hands. I hope that you enjoy making and wearing these rings."

"The Momentary series is an ongoing body of work that guides viewers to see their environment in terms of jewelry and adornment.  It consists of numerous photographs of people recontextualizing everyday objects and structures into momentary ornaments.   This series seeks to find what it means to wear something, and the limits of wearability.  Does one wear the railing as they walk down the stairs?"

Curler

Crank

And she says of the Accumulation  series,

"This work uses the language of mass produced chains, metal findings and gilt holiday cards to talk about accumulation, adornment, luxury and value.  In the actual necklaces, ubiquitous objects such as spring clasps, chains, tubing and thread, become prominent within a system of construction.  Rather than serving as overlooked attachments, the parts gain meaning by becoming decorative in addition to functional."

Snapped

Hook and Eye

Practitioner: Mary Donald

Mary Donald works with rubbers, plastics, latex, nylon, gold and silver. Her techniques include cutting, burning, drilling and rivetting the materials to evoke patterns in the natural world.

Brief Reflections on Attachment: 'between' and the skin wearable

Firstly some background... Over the past year much of my work has involved treating the skin as a wearable by creating temporal custom jewellery and seeing what possibilities come out of subverting accepted practices of adornment.

This has been a process of (un)learning by abandoning assumed sites of adornment (outcome: jewellery for the inner nostril), addressing preciousness (outcome: gold leaf shaped by the lived experience of the wearer's body and movements), and challenging cultural assumptions surrounding beauty practices (outcome: tan lines from a lurid artificial tan in the form of enormous, lacy sebaceous glands).

Working with the skin as wearable has required an ethical, theoretical and practical awareness of the organ's porosity. Initial experimentation with temporal wearables has developed into a practice that places emphasis on collaborations, the philosophy of perception, social signification, and the properties of individual bodyscapes. The physical 'attachment' of skin and wearable is by necessity brief, and the skin left ultimately untouched at the end of the wearable life. The focus becomes memory, codification, and the constitution of experience.

Tarryn Handcock. Tanlines (day 1). Artificial tan, sebaceous gland lace, carbon transfer. 2010. Photo: Matthew Burgess

Now to the present... 


Both teaching and a recent return to creating tangible objects has led me to survey the realm of the wearable with new eyes. A latent fascination with methods of joining has resurfaced, along with a growing awareness of what it means to attach artefacts to our person in a particular way, and for a particular period.

The (current) title of my thesis  is ‘Nostalgic Skin’: dissipating boundaries, between body and wearable. More discussion at a later date, but the term most pertinent to this reflection is 'between'. That's a cracker of a word isn't it? Slippery, oscillating, amorphous, adrift. In joining and attaching objects/materials to the body 'between' becomes a murky trope. States form 'between' skin and wearable spatially, physically, psychologically, and symbolically.

 Cinnamon Lee. Covert Jewels. 2011.

The matter at hand... Established in jewellery theory is the duality of the worn object as both a signifier for an audience and an artefact imbued with personal value. Established too, in this is the dichotomy between the intimate interior of the ring and its outer, public face. Reveal/conceal, as beautifully illustrated by Cinnamon Lee's recent work, Covert Jewels shown at Metalab, is often about the private experience hidden from the world at large, between the object and wearer.

For wearables in direct contact with the skin - garments, prosthetics and medical aids, jewellery-objects like necklaces, earrings, bracelets, rings - this is a relatively direct relationship of skin to non-skin material. The methods of 'attachment' to the body include, but are by no means limited to, encirclement, piercing, suction, wrapping, and tension. Between skin and wearable there is a perceptual relationship formed around sensory input from the object's materiality, method of wear, site, biofeedback, memory, and imaginative possibilities inspired by the experience of the artefact with the lived body over a period of time. This relationship is based on the assumption that these artefacts are removable, but that enduring relationships can result in an incorporation into body schema and self-identity. There may be a clear distinction between the intimate, personal zones of the artefact (the socket of a prosthetic, interior of a ring, hook of an earring, inner seam of a dress) and the zones that are public. These are most often established in accordance with the concealed/revealed zones of skin, the private areas forming out of the experience generated 'between' skin and wearable.

 

(left) Kathleen Jackson. Skin: Necklace. Prosthetic gelatine jewellery attached to the wearer using prosthetic adhesive, prosthetic gelatine blender, and rubber mask grease paints



(right) Tiffany Parbs. Rash. 2004. Skin and rash from allergic reaction.

A question...

What does it mean for the skin to be implied in the 'wearable'? I have stood by the interpretation that the 'wearable' is an entity that implies the body and may be worn or borne by it. Yet what it means to 'attach' this to the skin of the body has become something of a contentious issue.  

The garment, jewellery-object, cosmetics, prosthetics, and medical aids are all worn in direct contact with the skin and have distinct socially encoded and functional properties. Body modification practices including implants, artifical organs, bone replacements and tattoos are assimilated into the body on a permanent basis, the skin barrier willfully torn asunder. And nano-technology, oils, energy waves, dusts, bacteria, parasites and viruses all traverse the porous skin membrane to be carried with the body and be manifested in various ways. Not only are the methods of attachment at issue, but the very ascertainment of boundary and what might not be worn, borne or attached to the body by some means or another is at stake.

The contemporary wearable could be attached through means previously unacknowledged - absorbed and embedded in our being, or ingrained in our surface. It could be slowly dissipating like dust motes in sunlight, suspended on our outer layers of garments, absorbed as an oil, projected from the body, or shed like fleeting clouds of dandelion spores in our wake.

more thoughts to come...