Landscape with two women
Image : Alistair Campbell
I am curious about the current rejuvenation of knitting at the present time and what is the relationship of domestic arts to art practice. In the film Landscape with two women, I aim to consider the relationship of domestic arts to art practice and question the amateur/professional relationship through a celebration of skills currently being used.
The film, Landscape with two women, takes as its starting point a visit to the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff to view the painting Welsh Landscape with two women knitting (1852) by William Dyce on display in the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff. The painting is described as: a romanticised Victorian view of ‘wild Wales’ and its ‘unspoilt’ people. Knitting was an occupation for the home and the need for hand knitting was already beginning to die out by the 1860s. This starting point challenged me to create a contemporary response to William Dyce’s painting.
Living in an area with a long history of the woolen industry, I felt driven to link my response to wool in some way. In my film, the focus is the conversation between two women knitting. It considers the language of knitting used in the construction of lace shawls and intarsia socks worked by two expert amateur knitters. A celebration of their skills is reflected in their conversation demonstrating their passion and skill.
As the activity of making textiles often takes place in domestic settings behind closed doors I am exploring my interest in the significance of the private space often employed by women to make textiles. In my documentary style film pieces, I am aiming to create work, which are of the subject itself. As society advances, we make less and less, as Daniel Charmy reflects: Almost all of us can make. It is one of the strongest of human impulses and one of the most significant means of human expression. Yet fewer and fewer people know how to make the things they use, need or want, or even how these things are made. (Power of Making, V&A 2011, p7)
Since childhood I have always needed to make. It seems to be a fundamental urge inside me. Driving my practice at present is the historical representation of women’s art through textiles, its links to craft and domesticity and its relationship to current work in order to comment on how women are represented in contemporary art.
There are many self-help films on the internet, which demonstrate the making process, but they do not reveal the significant exchanges that occur between individuals. My practice is concerned with enabling skilled practitioners to communicate their experiences/history and to reveal ways of dealing with subject areas that are so far undisclosed. The research aspect of the work is formed by the intimacy of exchange between people and how it can be critically reflected upon. In my experience art films that address textiles can be limited by their intention to document rather than reveal the unpredictable and essential exchange of the live situation.
CREDITS:
With Kay Ryder
Betty Hebditch
Camera and sound
Alistair Campbell, Josh Randall
Special thanks to the Engine Room, Bridgwater for their support with post production