Practice Statement Assignment

The overarching enquiry in my practice is based around the making and unmaking of art. I am interested in the physicality of the process and the layers of addition and subtraction. I acknowledge the fact that I am a female artist and historically we have ignored the influence of women artists and that the situation is now changing with many retrospective exhibitions and writing. I am interested in mark making and gesture and the concept of ‘the feminine line’, used to describe the artist Ghada Amer’s ‘embroidery paintings’ but obviously having so many more associated meanings which I intend to explore.

After watching the Red Leap Theatre’s 2021 stage adaptation of Owls Do Cry, an initial line of enquiry began to form. During the show the actors climb in and out of a huge, knitted jumper while speaking out their lines. It is awkward and constricting and yet each worked their way in and out simultaneously. I read the novel searching for reference of this jumper, and this paragraph made it make sense:

‘… father would pick at something ….. the way someone who is knitting will pull at the threads to make a hole, but their father tried to pick and unpick something inside himself, that every year of being alive had knitted, with the pattern, the purl and the plain of time gone muddled different from the dreamed neatness.’

-       Janet Frame, Owls Do Cry, 1957

I liked the idea of attempting to unpick a pattern knitted within you that you were not happy with. The idea of unravelling the pattern, of undoing the design and starting again. It is the act of unmaking.

Visually the ordered neatness of the pattern juxtaposed with the unravelled threads reminded me of a tapestry: one side neat pattern, the other side a muddle of loose ends. The tapestry loom presents a framework in the warp and weft of the weave which creates interesting visual interactions and structure; a grid that competes with the uncontrolled fibres of the finishing process. Tapestry and weaving have become leitmotifs in my work.

In Peter Shand’s essay, ‘If I were Penelope’[1]he compares Judy Millar’s painting process to Penelope’s weaving of a shroud for Laertes:

‘So by day she’d weave at her great and growing web – by night …..she would unravel all she’d done.’[2]

Waiting for the return of her husband, Odysseus, Penelope fends off encroaching suitors with the promise that she will address the situation once she has finished weaving the shroud. The action of unravelling the shroud by night can be likened to an unmaking of the grid but it also represents the action of taking control off her situation, the unmaking becomes a feminist act. In this body of work for my end of year exhibition, I have used Penelope’s image as a motif in the work. I researched historical paintings and took her image from these and used them in a variety of iterations.

Judy Millar’s work shows a physicality in her layering and bold use of gesture and scale. She works on the floor and with the use of bags of sand manages to achieve such painterly effects without the use of traditional brushes. She engages in a process of layering by putting paint down and then wiping it away which has been described by a friend of Millar’s as ‘painting backwards’ and is also the title of Anthony Byrt’s book[3].

In ‘Brushstrokes’, an interview with Jarrett Earnest, Judy Millar discusses how painting becomes a kind of undoing or evacuation of the Self. “… the fact that I was undoing the painting by taking the paint off, I felt like I was also undoing myself.”[4] Referring back to the choreography in Owls Do Cry, Millar describes her process as undoing painting and working herself out.

In Selina Ershadi’s review of Anoushka Akel’s exhibition Wet Contact, she describes the physicality of her process:

 ‘[Her] process is a material engagement of layer, line and erasure, that is both sensual and arduous; delicate yet crude. Pressing, sanding, scratching, rubbing, smearing, scraping, she applies layer upon layer (wave after wave) to the canvas, sometimes weathering away the surface ….. to faintly reveal what remains beneath then building it back up again’.[5]

Akel’s process is like wave after wave of addition and subtraction (like Penelope’s day and night), a forward and backward movement, (like those early weavers), the making and unmaking of the work.

In my process I intend to include a physicality that relates back to the action of weaving or like Millar and Akel’s adding and subtracting. I have worked on large canvases on the floor before stretching. I have experimented with the use of natural dyes as used in early tapestries to provide the first colour layer, such as Madder Root and indigo but then introduced modern inks into the layers. All in reference to this early craft. Horizontal and vertical lines drawn on the canvas reference the loom, and the grid also appears in the weave of the fabric applied.

Then the action of random mark making with a variety of materials, chalk and oil pastel, charcoal or oil stick, the loose ends, tangles and unravelled threads of the tapestry and unpicked pattern. The inclusion of fabric onto the canvas can also represent the mending or patching up of a tapestry or a last remnant. I have recently begun to experiment with glueing the fabric to the canvas and then ripping off as an extension of the idea of adding and subtracting layers. The fabric that has been removed has retained the print of the marks on the original canvas making an interesting impression of the original.

The idea of stitching is implied by lines and thread and thread drawing, as well as actual embroidery with thread that is stitched into the canvas with the use of an embroidery puncture tool. This is hand done. Another option I have been exploring is using a sewing machine to add another style of machine stitch to the work. This has been used on the fabric rather than the canvas and is still at experimental stage.

Installation options are to disrupt the convention of the frame (also a grid) by allowing fabric to overlap the sides and threads to hang down. I am also interested in exploring options of hanging the work so that both sides are visible. I am also considering hanging the fabric bi-product next to the original canvas.

[1] Peter Shand, ‘If I Were Penelope’ Art New Zealand, 91, (Winter 1999): 60-63, & 87.

[2] Homer, The Odyssey, 2:98-100 c. 750 BC

[3] Anthony Byrt, Judy Millar: How to Paint Backwards, (Auckland, Gow Langsford Gallery, 2003).

[4] Jarrett Earnest, ‘Judy Millar: Brushstrokes’, Documents, (Auckland, Michael Lett Publishing, 2021-23), p326-352.

[5] Selina Ershadi, ‘Anoushka Akel: How Does it Start the Sea’, Documents, (Auckland, Michael Lett Publishing, 2021-23), p134-151.