2023/2024

Machine Detritus 2023/2024 - Felted domestic tumble dryer fluff.

'All stacked up. Series 1' - digital manipulation.

Exploring the detritus of the everyday with the felted fabric from a domestic tumble dryer. It is the abject material of the lived experience of our lives that is carried on our clothes. Here the 'fluff' is moulded around domestic objects in a narrative examining what material surrounds us and envelops us and is constantly being produced. 

 'All stacked up. Series 2' - in cold light. 

MFelted domestic tumble dryer fluff.

'Objects of us' - Exploration of detritus as a history of us in the context of the everyday.

'Cup of us'

 

Abject Materiality 2023/2024 - ‘ Trace of Hidden Beauty ‘ and tinted prints.

Abject Materiality - beauty from the abject - (felted machine detritus photographed in sunshine)

Creating felted  flower like structures to find the beauty in the abject  and explore the hidden and the overlooked.

Abject Materiality - ‘ Trace of Hidden Beauty ‘ tinted prints.

‘ Our fears like starlings’ 2023/2024  — Domestic Tumble Dryer detritus, fluff sculpture.

Murmuration: Performative work

Tumble dryer detritus, never ending, overwhelming, seeping and environmentally toxic. Its negative form its negative energy mimicking our darkest thoughts and fears.

Nod to Sarah Lucas:

Domestic Setting: Murmuration 2

 

Murmurations 'Our Fears like Starlings' (2024) - captured in charcoal, inverted to negatives.

Swirling negative thoughts at 3 am as you lie in bed reminded me of the swirling, menacing murmurations of starlings coming in to roost. these images were copied from photographs I took when I went to see this amazing natural phenomena. 

Murmurations (2024) - charcoal on vintage napkin.

I repeated the drawing of the starlings onto a vintage napkin, delicately and expertly embroidered by a Victorian lady. I wondered what her thoughts might have been as she sewed, was she allowed to voice her worries, concerns, fears? 

 

'We become hollow vessels' (2023) - machine detritus sculptures.

Empty and fragile, these works explore our material surroundings, what can we  make of this matter. What does it say about us?  The layers of meaning and lived experience within this matter makes for deep contemplation. 

Inner machine workings - manipulated moulding.

 

'Under Pressure' (2023) - raw material detritus flat moulding.

 

‘We are family‘  (2024) - family detritus - domestic machine detritus.

It came from us .....

 

The chattering classes (2023) - waxed tabors and digital media.

Researching the uniform of the domestic I was drawn to the aprons evolution to the tabard. A symbol of female toil and work, paid or unpaid it is emblematic of labour. I sought to elevate it sculpturally. I waxed the material to create stiff, human like pieces that seemed to congregate and communicate as I hung them. I added red mouths, or lipstick  to accentuate this, the work became the rather strange talking tabards.

 

Evidence of Her (2023) - artist portrait and mixed media.

The barograph poured out its measure of air pressure on the vintage graph paper, it mimicked the ups and downs of emotion and feelings we experience, using red sewing thread I enlarged these onto the paper. At night the graph was flat and still, I slept in peace, flat lines and calm.

 

 

Domestic armour (2023) - wax, cotton and dye.

The tabard - heavily waxed - solid and heavy like armour, it stood on its own ready and waiting to take on the tasks she had ahead,  the labours identified  and  inscribed upon it. 

 

‘Everyday drudgery’  (2023) - mixed media, machine detritus, polaroids.

Using wasted polaroid snaps the days of dullness unfolded before her. The   daily material waste, caught up in her daily labours overwhelms her 'snapshot' moments.

 

VENERATE (2023) - shrine to the female.

'Venerate' - is a work concerning the essential and pared back notions of 'femaleness'. Exploring across culture and ethnicity it comes from a place of belonging, shared experiences and the common bonds of being female and with that necessitates within us.

The postcard was sent to a selection of female artist to explore their response to this notion of 'shrine'  and the veneration of the female. A work I will continue to explore with other female  artists to collate a curated exhibition response to the theme.