anything with your hands

June Pearce - Anything with your hands (2022)

Filmed on a snowy afternoon at Sunny Bank Mill archive in Leeds.

Through contacts and wider conversations, I was able to liaise with the archivist at Sunny Bank Mill in Leeds in November 2021 to meet with a local retired mender, June Pearce, to talk about her experiences as she started work at the mill when she left school. The footage is of the conversation with Joan, the archivist and me over cups of tea. The meeting took place on a snowy afternoon and the resulting footage is very static due to the importance of keeping warm and the lack of June’s mobility - she was eighty-seven at the time.

The moving image aims to make the most of a static documentary format featuring the edited conversation with June being the focus. However, there is an experimental approach to the editing incorporating textile concepts as a form of visual mending where there is a need. The work of the menders needs to be invisible but the digital mends reflect the current revival of visible mending, creating decorative darns through incorporating manipulated images within the final edit.

THREADS - ARNOLFINI JULY 2023

FEELING WALL SAMPLE

Still images from my experimental film about invisibly repairing cloth, digitally printed onto fabric, woven, patched and embroidered.

Filmed on a snowy afternoon at Sunny Bank Mill archive in Leeds.

Studio image of printed Glitch Clips integrated as hidden images within the documentary conversation moving image work with June Pearce at Sunny Bank Mill, Anything with your hands.

Timeline Gansey Best (image on the right) as part of the Wolves PhD show together with the moving image Timeline Stitch Conversation screened in a dark space next to the textile pieces.

Studio:

  • Printed images from clips created as digital glitches as visible mends to incorporate into Anything with your hands. The idea of using these images to create forms of ‘storyboard’ works, potentially to be printed onto fabric and ‘mended’ with decorative darning stitches as visible mends.

  • Different arrangements of how these clips – currently consisting of 9 frames (3 + 3 + 3) printed as a way to consider how these would look as artworks when printed off onto fabric

  • Alternatively these series of images could be printed as a straight line (9 frames) of each of the 5 different glitch clips formed

Crit Group:

  • The conversation in the film engaged the audience

  • Think more about the role of the hands

  • The glitches are too obvious still

  • Should there be some blank spaces with just the conversation being heard, continuing the invisibility of these women

  • Would the glitch work as a still image

  • Could the sound on the glitch clips form a rupture as a sound ‘knot’

  • Think more about the concept of the front of the cloth always being perfect

  • Explore whether duplicating the film so that there is a perfect edit and one with all the imperfections

  • This might be screened on two monitors back to back, or a split screen image

  • Explore ways to break up the narrative and to create ruptures within the edit

  • Consider the visibility of the figure and whether the film should be shown in a part of the gallery not normally open to the public – behind closed doors as concept for this. How to guide visitors into an unusual space. This would need to be inviting, perhaps via an open door

  • Could ruptures be created with the sound, repeating words as in a disco re-mix

  • Increase the focus on June’s hands in the images

  • Think about addition of clips changing by the image coming down, reflecting the movement of the cloth June talks about

  • Rupture as words maybe “Oh gosh”

Rhythm of your cloth? Thoughts from stitch group conversation :

  • Physical movement of the cloth

  • Lines above and below

  • Strong and repeated movement or sound

  • It’s not the weave but how the cloth is changed

  • What is done to the cloth

  • Painter Ivan Hitchens talks about ‘eye music’

  • shapes and forms blends/stitches to make marks on cloth

  • surface to create rhythms on the surface

  • mirroring etc

  • professional use – how to tension is fed round a garment

  • arranged – to lead the eye round a garment

  • rhythm everywhere – repetition

  • near to flow state – creative – relaxed concentration

  • counting up and counting down when working fair isle

  • know when the rhythm is lost

  • painting and machining is meditative

  • practiced knowledge and sound

  • visual punctuation