Farting About

Weaving Ghosts at An Lanntair

According to the Oxford English Dictionary ‘farting about’ seems the best way to describe the current post-exhibition phase of my work cycle. It’s always hard getting back into it when I have been away from the studio for a few weeks.

It wasn’t possible to be at An Lanntair in Stornoway to set up Weaving Ghosts so I was keen to go and see if my written instructions had enabled Roddy Murray and the gallery staff at An Lanntair to install it as I wanted. Barring problems to do with lighting (which meant the shadows on The Ossuary were not as intended) and the very high ceilings that prevented the installation of Hoose, (hopefully I will get another chance to install it somewhere else) the exhibition looked good in the space. I was particularly happy with North Atlantic Drift because the spacing between the individual baskets was perfect (not easy with 70 plus baskets all different shapes and sizes), so my thanks to Roddy Murray for that.

North Atlantic Drift and There Were 15 To Feed At Midbrake 

The 8 schools workshops for children aged between 5 and 13 were full on but I had very generous help from two members of the Scottish Basketmakers Circle, Dawn Susan and Angela Price along with JJ plus staff from the schools and An Lanntair, for which I am very grateful. Thanks are particularly owing to Moira for her organisation and communication skills and to Joe for his knowledgeable and willing practical aid. A gallery talk and an interview on BBC Radio Scotland were also packed into 4 days.

Unravelling with Joe!

Exhibitions are really important for me, without them I don’t do much in the studio. I love the whole process involved in creating, curating and organising an exhibition, but this post-exhibition phase is always the hardest bit.

Weaving Ghosts has had 5 showings so far (2 Scotland and 3 Norway) and there is at least one more venue planned in England but not until next year, so at the moment I am trying to find more galleries to fill the gap or continue the tour, but it’s a pretty thankless task.

On the evidence of my experience the only way to get venues to give you a show is if you actually know someone who works there, or have some link to the venue. Sending unsolicited proposals has seldom been successful for me. It doesn’t take much to just acknowledge receipt of a proposal but it’s obviously too much effort for a lot of the people responsible for planning exhibitions. Many of the bigger and better known galleries also specifically say that they do not accept unsolicited submissions so unless you know someone working there you haven’t a hope in hell. Smaller regional museums and Art Centres in Britain are easier to get a show in than the big galleries, so that is where I concentrate my efforts though even with them it’s also often hard to get a response. Just a ‘thank you’ would do. So far I have sent out 4 detailed proposals tailored to individual venues in the last couple of months and not had a single response. I am an artist, not a salesperson, so I am not going to cold call or doorstep people, I try to find a more sympathetic way of doing things, but even after 30 plus years at it I still don’t really know what is the right way to get results!

Meanwhile I have plenty more ideas I want to explore for Weaving Ghosts but without a confirmed date for its next showing I am finding it difficult to focus so today have spent my studio time flitting from one thing to the next.

 

Here is a typical unfocused day in the studio…..ironing some plastic lids, I really like the resulting flat brightly coloured disks with the vestiges of their ribbed edges and screw mechanism. Making willow frames for the planned Southport Boat Basket. No kinks today, possibly because I had soaked the white willow for much longer and had altered the former I made with some concave shaping on the corners and an inner tube to cushion it. Cutting up heavy duty polyethylene bottles, possibly for the SBB but not sure and cutting up inner tube for tying the frames. Playing with gladioli leaves to see if I can remember how to start a continuous, non-stitched, coiled, plait, like the one Carlos Fontales briefly showed me how to do with esparto. Gave up after a while, as it wasn’t working and was just making me cross. In principle it seems very simple, I am just having difficulty with the rhythm of it and the hand positioning at the moment.

Took some photos of work in progress on the Southport, responded to some emails and social media, edited the Weaving Ghosts proposal for galleries and looked on line for some regional museums. Sorted some willows and put them to soak in the pond. Started writing this blog post. Shaved some skeins of willow, for the SBB, and watched an astonishing amount of large hailstones come out of the sky and cover the ground outside the studio in a few seconds. 

I hope this phase doesn’t go on too long, because it feels a bit tedious and uncreative, but I know it’s the only way I am going to get back into it, it’s essential to be in the studio just ‘farting about’.

Drawing Inspiration

1996 Contemplate and Cure, Taitemia Gallery, Kuopio, Finland

One of the requirements of the City and Guilds Basketry Certificate, that I did at the London College of Furniture in 1982, was to produce a body of work using all the techniques and materials we had studied based on a theme. Mine was Baskets in Paintings as there were plenty of them and  I enjoyed looking for them. Subsequently, paintings and drawings, without baskets in them, have often provided me with inspiration and in each case helped me to develop new techniques and forms,(the Heironymous Bosch painting Christ Crowned with Thorns  and Picasso's The Pan Pipes, among others)  but I haven't done any for a while.

1998 Basket inspired by Heironymous Bosch, Cardboard, willow and plastic bottles

During a recent search for some slides of old work I came across some  images which reminded me just how good it can be to work off someone else's creativity, without actually working collaboratively.

In 1996 JJ Ignatius Brennan (my husband) and I had a joint exhibition in Finland, at the Taitemia Gallery in Kuopio. The title of the Exhibition was 'Contemplate and Cure' which was also the title of a series of drawings he had done in response to my having a cancer scare. In turn I then used his drawings as the inspiration for my baskets. For me it was a great way to get ideas without having to search for them, they just leapt off the drawings at me, but they also presented me with  lots of challenges in terms of techniques, which I relished.

Whilst we were there we taught a joint workshop at Kuopio Academy of Crafts and Design where the students were asked to use their senses smelling, touching and hearing things to inspire marks on paper. These marks led to drawings which became baskets.

It was a long time ago, I cannot remember the names of all of the students and my photos of the workshop were not good. But I do remember it being a very creative few days, for all of us.

Ghosts at the Kloster

Deep Six

Weaving Ghosts is now on show at Halsnoy Kloster (monastery) on the island of Halsnoy in the Hardanger fjord in Norway, where it will remain on show until the 14th August.

The trip to set it up started badly for me, with striking railway workers in France preventing me from getting to the airport. This resulted in losing a day that had been planned for the installation and also meant that there was little time spare for me to explore the island.  In the end it didn't really matter because the house and gardens of the Kloster are so special there was no need to look further.

The gallery and my home for the week was in a rustic mansion built in 1841 set amongst the remaining stones of the original medieval monastery. It reeks history and according to the locals is haunted. The floorboards did creak occasionally but I have no doubt that was caused by the unusually warm weather with the sun shining out of a clear blue sky for six days solid, rather than phantoms. One of the locals told me that summer normally happens on a Tuesday in July!

Flotilla

There Were 15 to Feed at Midbrake and Fleiki

In the semi basement, which has low arched windows looking onto the garden, are four linked rooms providing the main gallery space with heavy wooden beams and rough cast whitewashed walls. The walls in the two main reception rooms on the ground floor are also used for exhibitions and are decorated with painted canvas panels in red and green.

HelenPetersen is the curator and manager of the house which is used for a photography residency and private events like weddings and conferences as well as being open to the public. It is filled with furniture from the museum collection and outside a lawn runs down to the  boathouse and stone jetty with a spectacular view of the mouth of the fjord. The house is surrounded by very tall ancient oaks, beech and ash. There has been very little modernisation in the house so it feels as though you are living in a very unprecious museum where you are allowed to sleep in the beds, sit on the chairs and eat at the tables.

It was interesting to set up the same exhibition in two very different spaces. The simple white box in the Shetland Museum  where everything could be pinned to the walls made the exhibition very easy to install  and I was very happy with how it looked there. But this is something totally different at Halsnoy, very domestic, small separated spaces, where nothing can be pinned to the walls, forcing me to re think how things could be presented. The effect it had on some of the pieces was dramatic, particularly Deep Six and Deep Sixty which came alive against the coloured walls of the Red and Green Room, I doubt if they could ever be hung in  better spaces.

Deep Sixty

Curating and installing my own work is becoming a habit that I enjoy. Each time I present it in a new location there are challenges and surprises that allow the work to be seen in a different way. In the Shetland Museum the space and lighting were a pleasure to work with but at the Kloster it is the fabric of the building and its demands that have added a new dimension. 

Footwarmas and Key of Sea

Peg Kishie

Being Shetlands' closest neighbour this region of Norway is also very appropriate for this particular body of work because there are many similarities between the two places. Not just latitude and climate or because they both have  Leirviks, but also because  they both lost a large part of their  basketry tradition when oil was discovered in the 1960's in the sea bed between the two places. 

My thanks go to Jane Catherin Saersten Junger of Sunnhordland Museum for inviting me to exhibit at the Kloster and to Helen Petersen who made me very welcome, working hard to make sure everything went to plan including gathering and washing materials from the beach for the workshop and open day. Also my gratitude to Oyvind Hjelmen who with Helen manages the photography residency at the Kloster and who helped me with the installation of my benign ghosts.

The fast ferry to Bergen made up for the trials of the outward journey. We definitely need one of these in Shetland to go from Yell to Lerwick... I might have to start a petition.

Weaving Ghosts

After much consideration  this is the title I have finally chosen for my next solo exhibition. It will be in the Shetland Museum in Lerwick for the whole of March 2016 and as the name implies, it will be about weaving and ghosts!

All the work in the show will  use, in some way, materials gathered  from the beaches in Shetland.  Most of the materials I will be using are jetsam from international commercial fishing such as ropes, nets, crates, mussel pegs, wellies etc. Situated at the northern tip of the gulf stream, Shetland receives tons of it every year and much of which is from places as far away as Spain, France, and Canada. I have written about this stuff before as I have had a  love-hate relationship with it for a long time. As a maker it is, for me, a fantastic  material store but as someone who despises the profit motive because of the lack of respect it generally has for people and their environments it is also something I detest. Plus, there is way more washed up on the beaches in Shetland than I can ever use.

There has been a long standing tradition amongst mariners of 'deep sixing' the rubbish they have on ships that they don't want to carry around with them, but it wasn't ever really considered to be a danger to anyone or anything when the things they were chucking overboard were biodegradeable. The invention of polypropylene has changed all that.
 
This ocean trash that comes, primarily, from commercial fishing  is now internationally known as 'ghost gear'.  Luminously drifting phantom-like in the dark ocean, these nets and ropes trap many species.  An international 'Ghost Gear Initiative'  has been set up this year by the charity, World Animal Protection (formerly World Society for the Protection of Animals) which aims to draw attention to  this problem through discussion, agreements and creative recycling.

But the 'Ghost' bit of my chosen title is not just about these materials, it is also about the lost tradition of basket making in the Shetland  Islands. Basketry once played a critical role in survival, now there are only a handful of people who remember how these tools for life were once made. The centuries old tradition of making  containers, traps, brooms, mats and chairs  from indigenous natural  materials died in the space of 50-60 years and by 2000 could officially be declared dead and buried. There were lots of factors that lead to this sad end, but it was  irrevocable. Now for the most part the knowledge of how to effectively turn plants into functional objects is only to be discovered in museums and books.  There are a few individual exceptions such as Ewen Balfour who, since the passing of Lowrie Copeland is now acknowledged as the guardian of the knowledge of kishies and their making  and Ian Tait, the director of the Museum, who knows pretty much everything about the history of these items. But this was once knowledge that existed in every family in the islands because it was important to their survival.

So, the 'ghosts' are the nets and ropes and other junk, the memories of baskets that are no longer needed, and also in some way the  family  'ghosts' of my grandmother  Eliza Tulloch and her  brothers and sisters who lived for the early part of their lives in the Haa of Midbrake, Cullivoe,Yell . I have so much  respect for these people who were self sufficient but also, of necessity, courageous and strong. Sent away from the family  for the first time as teenagers to go to sea or to serve as maids in places like Edinburgh, as my grandmother did, many of them never returned to live in the place they always regarded as home.

It is now my big challenge to try and amalgamate all these ideas into a coherent exhibition that I hope to tour to other venues in coastal locations where it could also have some relevance. If any of you know of any venues that you think might be appropriate please let me know.

At this stage the ideas are just starting to take shape and I know that the best way for them to develop is just to make, so I am trying to ensure that I get a few hours in the studio every day working on something even if that something ends up being a sample rather than a finished piece. 

I will try to keep you posted about  how the work is developing both here and on facebook.

Traditions Futuristes, A New View

Yesterday we received the catalogue for Traditions Futuristes the exhibition running until December in Tusson, France. It was a lovely surprise to find this image of the Retroscope taken by Raphael Mouly. It gave us another way of seeing our work that we had not envisaged but which gives food for thought for future projects. Thanks to Raphael and to Natacha Billot for her work on the catalogue.

Viva Basket!

Is the name of an event that took place last week in the border town of Cieszyn, in Poland.

Organised by Serfenta in collaboration with Norwegian partners, it is part of a wider project to research baskets and makers in both countries and it brought together outdoor installations, exhibitions and an international conference. I was invited along with Jette Mellgren, JanJohansen and Carlos Fontales to create outdoor pieces.  Jette and Jan worked on the (northern) Polish side of the border and Carlos and I worked in a small public park with a pond full of water lilies in the Czech Republic! In reality it was only a footbridge without  formalities that separated the two teams.

Strapping tape was sourced for us from Castorama, by the car load.......

Photo courtesy of Serfenta.

and we combined it with willows to create a ‘fountain’ of plaited hearts (me) and clusters of random woven ‘parasols’ (Carlos).

The installation of the ‘fountain’ could not have been achieved without the help of the brave Marek Malesza – the pond had some big fish in it! My thanks go to him, also to Paulina Adamska Malesza, Ania Krezelok and everyone else at Serfenta for all their hard work on this event and for inviting me to be a part of it.

Retroscope

The Retroscope, constructed using medieval technology, enables us to look back into the past. When Marguerite d’Angouleme stayed in the Maison du Patrimoine in 1547 she did what a lot of us do when travelling and left behind some of her personal possessions. With the help of the Retroscope it is possible to see  two of them.... a pair of sunglasses and her mobile phone!

 

The exhibition is on  until the 15th December.

Teaching and Speeches

Pole Experimental Metiers d'Art workshops, Nontron

On Saturday I returned to Nontron to do a workshop for 15 enthusiastic students of all ages, all female of course and only a couple who had ever done any basket making before. I like that because it means the knowledge is being spread a bit further into the community thus finding a new audience. There were teachers, textile and paper artists, jewellers and a chef amongst them. The building that PEMA runs workshops in is old on the outside but contemporary inside and it has plenty of space including a garden. It’s the kind of building that the Crafts Council in London could only have dreamed of! I was kept very busy and I never got around to taking any photos.
   
Vannerie au dela d l’usage is the exhbition that the workshop accompanies. The other exhibitors were Xavier Chabaud, FrancoisDeplanches, Myriam Roux, Thomas Louineau, Vincent Castaneira, Julien Devaux ( not a basket maker but a designer who worked with a basketmaker)  Karen Gossart and Quentin Corentin.   It was Xavier who suggested I be invited to participate  and so my thanks to him because it’s a lovely space and the exhibition is being well received. 

At the opening the Mayor and various other local politicians made speeches standing in front of   ‘Satellites’ which is  fixed to the wall with dressmaking pins, (historic monument regulations) the baskets being delicately attached to each other with paper clips. So, it was quite stressful for me, as the speeches went on, to watch the gathered dignitaries slowly backing up towards the work looking for a wall to lean on.  All that was needed was for one of them to touch it and the whole thing could have come down on them, which might have been very entertaining….. but probably best avoided. In fact the speeches went on so long that people started leaving the room, looking for a drink! By the time they got around to asking the makers if they would like to say something we had lost the audience. In France the drinks come after the speeches rather than with them, but speeches seem a small price to pay for the public funding of such a lovely venue.

My work is very different to that of the other exhibitors as theirs is almost exclusively made with willow or willow bark. One of the visitors at the opening told  me that the organisers must have stretched the meaning of the word vannerie ( basketry) to include my work, because, she said,  vannerie to  a French person is exclusively  a basket woven out of willow.  To be honest I didn’t know what to say. It’s the first time I have ever heard that said before. After I got my voice back I explained why I felt my work could legitimately be described as vannerie. I then asked her what she would call the traditional paillassous or coiled straw and bramble baskets that were once ubiquitous in France and which bear no resemblance at all to woven willow baskets, she hesitated, then smiled and said ‘vannerie’! 

El Costurero de Aracne

Last August I was invited to participate in a project organised by Angel Sanz Montero of the Department of Art Textiles at the University of Granada. The brief was to make 40 'identical' works that would become part of the 6^th edition of El Costurero de Aracne which translates as Arachne's Sewing Box. 

Arachne was, according to Ovid a superb, but mortal, weaver in Greco Roman mythology who picked an argument with the goddess Athena. Being, among other things, the goddess of weaving, Athena wasn’t too impressed when Arachne boasted that she was a much better weaver than the goddess. A mega spat ensued and Athena used her superpowers to morph Arachne into a spider! The tale, it is suggested, explains why spiders aren’t bad at weaving either. 

The brief didn't mention any of this, it just said the works should be of a textile character that measured no more than 3x3x2,5cms!!!  Que horror!  Anyone who is familiar with my work knows that  I do not normally do small, let alone miniature. I like to make sculptural objects that occupy some space. Also, as a consequence of handling a lot of wire, my finger tips have become quite desensitised which makes working on a miniature scale difficult. However, even with only the promise of receiving a copy of the final work as recompense I decided to take on the challenge and today my copy of El Costurero de Aracne VI arrived in the post.

I was determined that I would make a basket and that it should use recycled materials and not be too labour intensive as I had to make 40 of them. In the end, after considerable experimentation, I decided to make small frame baskets. I used plastic bottle tops to give me a standard size for a circular frame that would not exceed the limitations. I then cut rings off the plastic lids and looped telephone wire onto these rings making small hemispherical baskets. Once I had the formula it didn’t take too long and I just made a few a day in between other jobs. The colours are different but technically the baskets are identical.

At the time of designing the baskets and whilst I was making them, I had not looked up the myth of Arachne so I hadn’t consciously considered making any references to the myth. I was too busy worrying about what I could possibly do on such a tiny scale! So, it was a pleasant surprise  when I had finished them and laid them out to photograph to see that I had made 40 little spiders webs. This phenomena is happening so frequently to me now when I am making that I am beginning to lose all sense of what is a conscious thought and what is not.....

In total 15 artists took part and each little box has 15 compartments containing a miniature art work. There is also a DVD with details about the works and the participating artists. It was produced in an edition of 50 examples so the other 35 boxes will go to other places and people. Tomorrow at 11.00  El Costurero de Aracne VI is being publicly presented at the University of Granada.

Numbers

This is the title of an exhibition of work by the members of Veer North, Britains most northerly group of visual artists based in the Shetland Islands. Our current exhibition on the theme of numbers opened last weekend at Bonhoga Gallery.

My contribution is a small clutch bag plaited out of the pages of a Shetland telephone directory. In order for it to perform as a bag in this damp climate, I wrapped the paper strips with polythene before plaiting, a labour of love but essential. Laminating the strips would have worked too, but I don't have a laminator and it would have meant buying materials, which is something I try to avoid doing. The strap is from an old camera and the button is a key from a defunct laptop.

The exhibition will be on until the 3rd of March.

Tri and Leaf Transplanted

The second version of “Tri and Leaf “went on show in the village of Charroux in the Vienne over the weekend 3, 4, 5, August. It was included in the 23rd annual art event ‘Les Peintres dans la Rue’ along with various other exhibitions and activities. Charroux is the home of the remains of an 8th Century Benedictine Abbey and among the treasures it holds are various relics, the most famous of which is the Holy Prepuce, or foreskin of Jesus. Sadly we were not being offered a glimpse of it on this occasion, and in 1900 the Roman Catholic Church ruled that anyone speaking or writing of it would be excommunicated, so I shall say no more. But, I was being offered a very atmospheric non gallery space to exhibit in.

When Paul Sally, the President of the Tourist Office invited me to participate, he showed me the space he thought I might like to show my work in and I loved it straight away. It was in an old house that had been used as a Gendarmerie and has lain untouched for many years, except for some basic maintenance. I was offered a domestic room perhaps once the formal reception room, with two large shuttered windows one to the north and one to the west, beautiful wide age-patinated floorboards and a fireplace.

Over the years, I have exhibited my work in many spaces but the majority have been formal galleries, white walled, spotlit and quite often soulless. The modus operandi for most galleries is still the white cube both in terms of the room and the plinths in order to show the work in isolation and although it may work for some things it doesn’t allow for any interaction between the object and the space.

Recently I have come to the conclusion that the white cube probably came about as a result of commerce because putting work in neutral spaces makes it harder for the gallery visitor to see it as an object within a context. This consequently makes it hard for them to ascertain the real value of the object and, dare I say it, makes it easier for the gallery to convince them that the monetary value of the object as displayed in the gallery is ‘correct’. The dusty vase on a shelf with other similar vases in a potter’s workshop might appear to the onlooker to be worth a lot less fiscally than the same vase dusted, isolated and spot lit on a plinth.

Latterly, the non gallery space has become the domain of conceptual artists rather than for those of us making objects. I now realise that these places are more sympathetic for my work as they allow it to interact with the spaces’ own history and can also provide a domestic context for things like laundry baskets and wastepaper bins. As I mentioned in an earlier post, this exhibition “Tri and Leaf”, has no price lists because nothing is for sale and this has now become, for me, a key element of the exhibitions I am curating for my own work. I want people to enjoy the work for what it is without the interference of any thoughts about the monetary value of the objects on display or any suggestion that they should be considering acquiring them. I want the work to be viewed in the same way that we might view the landscape allowing ourselves simply to have an emotional response to it.

Obviously I still need to make a living so I am asking for an exhibition fee from the Tourist Offices or other organisations who invite me to show the work. So far no one has refused and everyone has been more than happy with the arrangement and the outcome. It is the same way in which musicians or other performers might operate and as I have said previously I see myself now more as a performer than a merchant.

I set up ‘Tri and Leaf’ in this beautiful room without lighting, or plinths, or prices, just labels indicating the materials used, as this is not always evident, yet it seems to assist with the viewers appreciation of the work. Then I watched and listened from the adjoining corridor as the visitors found the room and entered. Some older men walked in and out without pausing to look at anything, because they were looking for the Philatelic exhibition in the same building, but most people entered and spent some time there looking at everything. When they were with someone else I could hear them getting more and more excited as they ‘discovered’ the next piece and wanted to share and discuss their discovery. Children ran in ahead of their parents and then ran straight back to their parents shouting at them to hurry up and come and see. People of all ages, both sexes and several nationalities came to look and some of them told me how much they enjoyed seeing the work. Some wrote something in the exercise book that I had left on a wooden console in the room for this purpose; some wanted to tell me about baskets or makers they remembered from their childhood and some just left talking about it. One man told me that his father had always kept empty milk cartons because he felt they had the potential for something but he didn’t know what. He washed them, flattened them, tied them in bundles and put them in his shed. Apparently he died recently and the son said he wished his father had lived long enough to have seen my work.

The seamstress and the baskets

On the Sunday afternoon it rained and the visitors thinned out but at the end of the afternoon a tiny and very elderly lady came in on the arm of her daughter. She had a very bent spine and walked slowly with a cane, it looked painful but her face lit up as she approached and delicately touched with her fine fingers each piece in the room. Her chirrups of delight increasing at the discovery of each material and technique and amazingly her gait speeded up to the point where she abandoned her daughters arm and trotted round the room unaided. I wanted to know more about this beautiful old lady so introduced myself and discovered that she had been a seamstress in her working life. I was delighted that someone from another era, another culture, another discipline and another nationality had seen something in my work that had given her so much pleasure on this damp afternoon. Afterwards I wondered if she would have ever gone into a formal gallery to see this exhibition.