Project 2
Stage 2
Analyse three pieces of work
I’ve chosen
three very different pieces of work to take a closer look at. I’ve not found it easy to get information
about some of the work.
Ptolemy Mann
Kings Mill Hospital in Mansfield.
Ptolemy Mann is an acclaimed weaver but the work I’m going to
look at is a development of her weaving. I’m going out on a bit of a limb here
because this certainly isn’t textile work. However, Mann can see clear links
between weaving and what I’m going to look at -architecture:
There has always been a link between
architecture and my work - weaving and architecture are both constructed and
are about the interaction of vertical and horizontal structures. Colouring the
facades of buildings is like making a giant weaving, but using glass or
powder-coated metal instead of thread to build up the blocks of colour. (Woolf, 2012)
I’m going to apply the same investigation that I have used
previously but to the coloured design of Kings Mill Hospital in Mansfield.
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| www.ptolemymann.com/kings-mill-hopsital.html |
Swanke Hayden Connell Architects and Skanska invited Ptolemy
Mann to design an eye catching external facade for Kings Mill Hospital. The work began in 2006 and was completed in
2011.
The request was made with the aim of giving the hospital an
accessible and welcoming appearance that would reduce anxiety particularly for
young patients. Mann’s website calls it
“Artwork on the Landscape”.
From particular positions, along the bypass for instance, the
building looks imposing but not overbearing – there’s an element of shiny fun
about it.
Mann used her expert knowledge of colour dynamics to create
panels in a huge range of colours in a variety of materials. Spandrel is a glass especially developed for
architectural installations by Pilkington and this was painted to Mann’s
specification. There was powder coated metal, transparent film and coloured
render all giving different effects.
 |
| Kings Mill Hospital External colour specification – Ptolemy Mann |
Mann described how she approached the work to
Diana Woolfe (2012).
At Kings Mill Hospital it made sense to
reflect what was happening internally on the facade – identifying different
zones on the building. I approached it like a weaver introducing tonality and
gradations of colour across the facade. The building has three different towers
and I gave each one a separate colour – green, magenta and blue - and made the
entrance area a warm, welcoming orange colour. It was a way of turning the
building itself into a work of art, making it look exciting and colourful and,
crucially, not too like a hospital.
I haven’t
met a soul who disapproves.
My next two
pieces are from a wonderful day I had at Salts Mill last autumn. To give some idea of the scale of the space I
have included two images from the Cloth and Memory 2 Catalogue (Millar, 2013)
Salts Mill – then and
now (Millar,
2013)
Karina Thompson
1 hour’s production = 1 ½ miles = 15 lengths
I was lucky enough to go on a study visit to Salts Mill last
autumn. The exhibition was Cloth and
Memory 2 curated by Lesley Millar. After
the curators tour there was a seminar including three artists with Lesley Millar in the chair.
Karina Thompson was one of the
artists and she made a big impression on me. Thompson was one of a large group of artists
who Millar had invited to respond to the space the Mill’s Spinning Room
offered.
The work Karina exhibited at Cloth and Memory 2 was “1 hour’s
production = 1 ½ miles = 15 lengths”.
1
hour’s production = 1 ½ miles = 15
lengths – Karina Thompson (Millar, 2013)
This work was Thompson’s personal response to the 168m vast
empty space that was once the Spinning Room at Salts Mill. Thompson writes
This piece seeks to visualise a
physical response to my first experience of visiting the Spinning Room at Salts
Mill.....For me the first time I entered the room I had an overwhelming desire
to run the length of it. (Millar, 2013)
The only thing that stopped her running there and then was
the pressure of being with strangers.
Thompson did return however and
......ran 1 ½ miles representing an hour’s cloth
production. (Millar, 2013)
She had made various preparations; she wore a heart monitor
and had collected enough mill dust to print her running footprints on paper as
she ran. The data collected is used in
this 100 x 0.5 metre embroidery. The resulting
work represents her run. Describing her very literal work Thompson says
The red ECG line shows how my heart
rate went from 68bpm to 181bpm. The
embroidered footprints are based on those prints taken on the run. The ultrasound triangles show how the
chambers of my heart open and close on a heartbeat. (Millar, 2013)
The grey colours are very much those we would find on an ultrasound
monitor. The ECG is shown in the crucial
heartbeat red.
Interestingly, Thompson related in the seminar the story of the
tacking stitches she used in her preparation.
She began taking them out until someone pointed out that they were in
fact running stitches whereupon she
re-stitched them.
The materials Thompson used were woollen cloth, a non woven
stabiliser, rayon, polyester, lurex and metallic thread.
Thompson enjoys the freedom her computer programmed sewing affords. It gives her opportunities undreamt of 25
years ago:
I can programme stitches with
pinpoint accuracy, fill areas with decorative satin stitch and build images
with precision....technology is allowing me to create and adapt imagery in a
way that I never expected. (Millar, 2013)
Thompson
describes the digital technique:
Imagery or text is initially cleaned up and edited in
Photoshop before being uploaded in to Pfaff's 5D software. Here the embroidery
can be programmed and further changes made. I use a Pfaff Creative Vision
machine to stitch work out. I am particularly keen to challenge
the way both the software and hardware suggest the embroidery is created. (Thompson,
2014)
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| Ultrasound heartbeat (Thompson, 2013) |
 |
| ...and interpreted in stitch |
I have looked at Thompson’s website and find this quite a
departure from her earlier slashed work.
I have read that her digital work is relatively new and that she is working in collaboration with
healthcare professionals (Thompson, 2014).
I find the development through
initial response to a space,
ideas generated
completed textile piece
fascinating and all the pieces of work in Cloth and Memory 2 went
through this process. I particularly like Thompson’s work because it
demonstrates such energy in a space where the urgency and rush appears to have
gone.
Diana Harrison
Handkerchiefs - 4 x 2.5 metres
I’ve chosen to look at another artist who responded to the
salts Mill challenge but in a quite different way (in fact there were no two
even remotely similar).
Harrison’s initial response was to admire the beautiful,
architectural space and then her imagination took over and she populated it
with people, machines, noise and smells.
She seems to have great empathy for the workforce who
their entire working lives, lived in
one place, Saltaire, with its philanthropic, support/living/work system (Millar, 2013).
Harrison was intrigued by the flagstones that had absorbed generations
of Spinning Room life but were still robust, in her words indestructible. She was interested in the patterns and the way the
large, grey pieces of stone fitted together. It was this that made her want to
do something that would be viewed at ground level.
Harrison made a collection of handkerchiefs. She collected them from all over the place
and the only things they had in common was that they were square and cotton.
They were a metaphor for the flagstones
Each with its own past; used, washed, worn or boxed, kept for
special occasions, given as gifts, hand embroidered or monogrammed. (Millar, 2013)
Harrison’s hankies
(Millar 2013)
This symbolism extended to the way the handkerchiefs were
stitched together (with a loose fishbone stitch) the size decreed where the cotton
squares would fit just as the flagstones would have years ago when Salts Mill
was new.
Harrison dyed all the squares black and the handkerchiefs
became more uniform; their distinguishing feature now was the quality of the
original fabric and any embellishment.
Harrison then worked on the squares individually discharging the dye and
making the squares different once again.
 |
Handkerchiefs – Diana Harrison
http://www.craftscouncil.org.uk |
According to Lesley Millar (2013) this work is not typical of
Harrison. She is renowned for her
quilting and this represents something very different. Although the work was laid on the floor of
the Spinning Room it was very evident that no-one but no-one was going to walk
on the squares – there was a sort of reverence shown towards the piece. I feel this is what Harrison was
demonstrating in her use of symbolism – a reverence for the memory of what went
before.
Attracted to the large flagstones in the
spinning room, Harrison created a covering for the floor from handkerchiefs.
Curator Lesley Millar writes about Harrison’s work: ‘The ubiquitous paper
hankie has rendered the cloth handkerchief as almost a memory, but back in the
heydays of production at the mill, a ‘proper’ cloth handkerchief would have
been a luxury item, only for use on Sundays and special days. The rest of the
time it would have been a piece of rag or nothing. The second-hand
handkerchiefs Diana Harrison has collected, dyed and sewn together were all
once prized possessions, and through her attention they are now precious again.
Laid out on the floor, as they are in the exhibition, they are like so many
memorials to the unknown owner/worker.’ (Millar 2013
Matthew Harris
I admire Matthew Harris’s use of cloth, paper and thread and
the way he incorporates musical themes.
I really wanted to look in detail at a piece of his work but the
information available for his textile pieces is scanty in terms of my
analysis. I can find sizes but that’s
about it.
The only piece with any detail
is “Scorched - A Graphic Score”. This is
a twelve metre long piece cut and burnt into a wooden wall at Colston Hall (Harris, 2014). Having just looked at architecture I feel I have to rethink my
desire to analyse work from Harris.
Shame.
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| Scorched - A Graphic Score – Matthew Harris at Colston Hall, Bristol |
Just for information here’s what
Harris says about this work
Wrapping around the ground floor performance space, Scorched is a twelve metre long Graphic Score that has been
cut and burnt into a wooden wall. The effect of the process is to create a
drawn mark that is akin to that created by a number of textile processes such
as Shibori and Ikat; and reflects those marks used by Matthew Harris in his
more familiar work with paper and cloth.
Using the language of Graphic and
experimental music notation, ‘Scorched’ has been designed to act as both a backdrop
to performers and an interpretive starting point for possible future work by
musicians, dancers and singers.
“I want to bring a drawn,
graffiti like, human scale mark into what is quite a large, open architectural
space and to create something that whilst not a textile, has some of the visual
qualities of one. The idea is to create something, which performers might
respond to in some way with sound or movement. A drawing/score whose marks and
signs can be interpreted as indications of certain sounds, musical phrases or
physical movements.” (Harris, 2014)
Bibliography
http://www.craftscouncil.org.uk/.
www.pillowmagazine.com.
Harris, M., 2014. http://www.matthewharriscloth.co.uk/.
Mann, P., 2014. http://www.ptolemymann.com/kingsmillhopsital.html
Millar, L., 2013. In: Cloth
and Memory 2. Salts Mill.
Thompson, K., 2014. http://www.karinathompson.co.uk/.
Woolf, D., http://www.themaking.org.uk/.
