#artlanguagelocation

I presented my piece Thread as part of a work in progress seminar last week. (Please see Art Language Location Post, 16/10/15) I was keen to receive some feedback on the work as I had not received a great deal during the Art Language Location exhibition.  Due to the work being situated in a non-art environment, viewers would have had to seek me out (via an email address on the interpretation panel) in order to have a dialogue about the work. This, unsurprisingly, did not happen.

During the workshop, the political side of the work was picked up on. The legible text was only visible to those ‘on the inside’. The philosophical quote referencing a search for Truth, could provide a double entendre about the ownership or rights to knowledge and Truth. It was suggested that the lack of feedback received from members of Cambridge University could be due to the fact that they felt insulted by the tone of the work. I had seen this as one of a number of interpretations of the work, and thought that the inference to elitism was more subtle. 

I’m currently exhibiting a new piece of work at Art Language Location in Cambridge.  Art Language Location is an annual festival of text-based artworks.  I submitted an ambitious proposal several months ago and was delighted to be selected for this exciting city-wide exhibition. My work is on display at the Casimir Lewy Library, Faculty of Philosophy, Cambridge University, Sidgwick Avenue and can be viewed until 1st November 2015. 

This work is a continuation of a thread of my practice exploring the form and agency of language through stitched text. 

The text is an excerpt from Metaphysics by Aristotle and reads:

“however,  let  us  avail  ourselves  of  the  evidence  of  those  who  have  before  us  approached  the  investigation  of  reality  and  philosophized  about  Truth.   For  clearly  they  too  recognize  certain  principles  and  causes,  and  so  it  will  be  of  some  assistance  to  our  present  inquiry  if  we  study  their  teaching;  because  we  shall  either  discover  some  other  kind  of  cause,  or  have  more  confidence  in  those  which  we  have  just  described.”  (Aristot. Met. 1.983b, trans. Tredennick)

I chose this text because of its reference to Thales, an early Greek philosopher whose view of the world centred around the element of water. There are no surviving works written by Thales, only references made by philosophers who superseded him. Aristotle here is writing about the search for Truth/knowledge/understanding. However the excerpt offers no answers and makes no statement of position.  Embroidered banners have historically been used by groups of people such as churches or protest groups to make statements.  The banner I have made, however is statement-less.  

Furthermore, it has been displayed in a window with the underside of the canvas facing out.  The abstract hieroglyphs of the illegible back-to-front text appear as a mimetic language or a code, the energy of their marks bound in an entropic pattern. The legible text faces the inside of the building, with restricted access to a select group of people, predominantly readers of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge.  

Whilst the constraints of the installation hint at an inaccessibility to academia, the technique of stitched lettering has roots in early female needlework. In the 19th Century ‘Samplers’ were created by young girls to show delicacy of handiwork and knowledge of letters and numbers (stitched alphabets etc.). As a female artist I know far less of the limitations that these women faced and can use my own (basic) embroidery to explore academic thought.

The work is entitled Thread. 

On Thursday I went to Cambridge with my art collective ‘Collective Investigations’ to install a piece of art called MIRROR ECHO. The work is part of an art fair called Art Language Location which sees works by various artists dotted around Cambridge. 

We have chosen three double sided notice boards outside a lecture theatre in Cambridge University’s Sidgwick Site. 

The piece is a play on perception and reflections. We want you to look at what is reflected on the boards instead of what is in them. Underneath a glass surface are a white sheet, black sheet and sheets with gradients from black to white and vice versa. 

The outer boards have the gradients so reflect the rest of the campus in a slightly distorted way. A black surface reflecting much clearer than a white one. The gradient boards act like a lens flare in a photograph masking out parts of the image. It is something that has to be seen to really experience it,  as the photographs have a kind ‘photoshopped’ quality, where the boards look false or artificial. It is something that you have to walk alongside, in doing so you see your reflection disappear and reemerge.

On the reverse of these gradient boards are printed two words: MIRROR and ECHO. These words reflect on the centre board. As you walk though the space you get caught in the reflection. You may notice the words printed backwards or you may notice the reflection of the word, but to see one board is to see the other. Situated outside the doors to lecture theatres that see multiple lectures a day there is a lot of passing traffic. I hope at least a few stop and contemplate on the space.