Output details

3 Rag books: How to sleep in Half a bed, While I was gone, and Transitions

This research illuminates how touch, handle and process play an intrinsic part in the development of ideas and their expression in visual narrative, identifying a dialectical interaction between maker, viewer and artefact. It explores how tactile qualities of stitch facilitate intimate communication between maker and reader, challenging the etiquette of display. It examines the dilemma of exhibiting work that can or cannot be touched, when touch is the central theme. Internationally selected and a prize-winner in Art of the Stitch (ISBN0903562642), the rag book How to sleep in half a bed, depicts a stitched narrative on sheeting, which deliberately enhances haptic qualities and addresses the impulse, particular to visitors of textile exhibitions, to read with the fingers. The process of reading the images thus changes the work as it softens, soils and distorts it, subverting the notion of precious. Multiple handling copies provided an innovative approach to the challenge of display. Subsequently, the possibilities and limitations of reading the artworks were investigated through a series of consecutive exhibitions exploring alternative presentations in response to physical changes. Six large scale cloths, Of no particular value 2, (selected to represent the UK, 13th International Triennial of Tapestry, Poland 2010 ISBN978-83-60146-14-9), reproduced the rag books Of no particular value, (purchased by MMU Special Collections) remaking them in flat sequences, testing the impact of format, scale and the tactile experience on interpretation. (Radical Thread 2012 ISBN9780957124202). The final book, while I was gone, introduces gradation of the pages reflecting the form of the handled versions, and featured in Ground in Cloth and Thread (Handstitch Perspectives, Mckeating/Kettle 2012) (A dartboard for witches Aberystwyth Art gallery 2010) (Textiles Schoeser 2012). Finally, three books, presented together (Close at Hand Owens Art Gallery, Canada 2011 ISBN0-88828-216-8), synthesised the outcomes enabling viewers to fully engage with the haptic experience.