Day 1
3 May 2022
There is something odd about coming back to make work in a place where you are from, but you left and now you are back. Yet, as I drove here today it felt right. Throughout my childhood and especially as a teenager here in the city, I had the chance to be creative. From my ‘labour of love’ confirmation book, in which I poured hours into drawing the saints and bible stories, to painting scenes on children’s bedroom walls, arriving on my moped with my paints in my backpack or in the helmet compartment under the seat, to the Mandala design I created for the Sisters of Mercy and my dad allowing me to paint our bar’s windows at Christmas time.
The funny thing is that I am wading through these memories before I can get to the present. It’s like trying to catch up with myself to get on with where I am at, now, here in the present twenty-four years later. There are two points and a middle. The residency draws the line between these two points, a way to connect the past to now. Is it about shielding this space from that or letting this undercurrent of past, leaving, time, distance, being away, homesickness, coming back, finding new ground, simmer to see what bubbles up?
Maybe it’s already present in the work, implied somehow – the work sets out to find something new in what is old to me. The patterns hold kinks and imperfections, the colour and shapes are a refusal, softened cloth and raw edges, neatly stitched lines, fuelled by thoughts of weightiness, levity and burden, freedom and task, things hidden, things revealed, youth, time and playfulness.
Day 2
4 May 2022
The textiles lie waiting. Waiting for me to get to them. They are at different stages. Some have been ironed, some are quilted, all are keen to move. There is anticipation of what will happen next. They have to respond to my own kind of awkwardness. A soft quilted textile panel will not wrap around a body, they will not provide warmth and comfort. Or maybe they will? Who knows. All I know is that they are made to be seen, to be upright, to become visible.
