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| No (Wo)man’s an Island, 2017. PVC leather, embroidery. Dimensions variable |
After several years in my practice of experimenting with sculptural forms inside the gallery context, and outside as sculpture or performative gesture in areas of designated ‘public space’, Stitches to Save 9 With at The Mine; a mainly textile series that explores language, meaning and memory. The works in this series evoke the sound of spoken or chanted lines in the mind of the onlooker. The sing-song delivery of many of these sayings, learned along with the lines, are meant to make these phrases indelible in the mind. Ironically however these maxims, truisms and dictums, although often useful, are largely forgotten or half remembered and are falling out of use.
Parts of longer speeches or poems, for example by John Dunne (1572-1631) or Seneca (4 BC–AD 65), these were once common ‘verbal tools’ yet now like hand stitching itself, is falling out of use. Yet writers such as Dunne, wrote about such lasting and recurring dangers as the dangers of isolationism, which could not be more relevant to the politics of today as questions of citizenship, ‘race’, and movement arise. On a Ukrainian flag are stitched a new proverb for today in red, white and blue: You can’t stop the wind from carrying a seed.
Many of the phrases we know and remember are described are imagined differently in other languages, for example ‘Break a leg’ translates as ‘Into the wolf’s the mouth’ in Italian. As these translated sayings
impart the same message, they are at once cultural markers of both our
overall oneness as a species, as well as our localised differences as citizens, class members, even gendered groups.
On another level, a reading of these words of wisdom brings into
focus aspects of a distinctly male view of the world, revealing archaic,
even damaging perspectives in their exclusion and exceptionalism, that
we have unwittingly perpetuated. There is therefore a tension between
what is needed in language, what we recall and what we use ourselves in
contemporary sourced echo this tension, I feel, about memory and
inheritance, our fast culture, the disposable production-ethic of cheap
items today and also the way we make quickly surmised readings and how
that is related to the way we view ‘art’.
I began to consider what could the truisms for today be, and what
would our inherited phrases have been if women had written history
instead of men?
With Stitches to Save 9 With art’s
ability to draw attention to aspects of our ethics, is drawn in close
parallel with the poetry’s (or song lyrics’) ability to do the same, as is the highly
elucidating power poetry commands to suggests nuanced layers of meaning
while also speaking on a very direct level to the listener. The press
release below, part-edited by Dr. Ali MacGilp, discusses the concept and
its relation to the overall material concerns of the show.
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Electric Dreams Can’t Last, 2017. Acrylic lightbox, vinyl image, electric cabling. (60 x 90cm)
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| No Shadows in Paradise, 2017. Neon tubing, perspex backing, electronic and cabling. (70 x 120 cm)
For the women’s work aprons “No Woman is an Island”, I took from English poet John Donne, in what is an extremely topical poem even today.
MEDITATION XVII
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
by John Donne
No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod(1) be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory(2) were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
1 Piece of earth
2 A high point of land or rock projecting into a body of water
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| On a Rock Floating Through Space, 2017. Cotton, embroidery thread, found frame, aerosol, coloured sand. 90 x 90cm |
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| The True Veil, 2017. Embroidery thread, cotton, found wooden frame. (90 x 70cm) |
In this
exhibition, Fari Bradley explores the nuances of language, history and memory.
Contemplating either the usefulness or destructive nature of traditionally
recited proverbs, truisms, and dictums alongside several new ones for today,
Bradley renders them as signifiers, using textile and mixed media.
Stitches to
Save 9 With pits the
deliberate form of stitching against quickly spoken lines, fleeting inspirations
and ‘quippage’. A proverbial
expression, ‘a stitch in time saves nine’ is an incentive: to stitch a tear in a cloth, now, before the tear
becomes larger and harder to mend. The ‘nine’
refers to the greater number of stitches that will be needed later, if one
quick stitch isn’t performed ‘in time’. This and other wise homilies in
this body of work are falling out of use – just as hand stitching itself is
disappearing.
Using a
range of materials, Bradley employs methods and tools that formed part of her
upbringing. With a parent who studied and practiced professional dress-making, offcuts
had been Bradley’s childhood playthings. Here, alien found objects, chanced
upon threads and remnants serve as inspiration for her work, chiming with the
popular reaction for a DIY aesthetic, against today’s overwhelmingly disposable
culture of low cost production. Such stitched works, while historically a hobby
for the upper classes, also reference a certain Anglo-Saxon work ethic preached
at the poor. Referencing this WWII ‘make do and mend’ work ethic, spoken,
chanted lessons for life are rendered in traditionally feminine techniques,
employing domestic skills that young girls once had to demonstrate in order to
become ‘marriage material’.
Decoratively
Bradley’s pieces resist a perspective framed in language, that often posits the
idea that human experience is ‘male experience’; No man is an
island, for
example. Yet while Stitches to Save 9 With is founded on the
often sombre messages behind these mechanically memorised sayings, Bradley’s
techniques employ layers of satirical significance and testingly playful
semantics.
Working
mainly as a sound and radio artist, Bradley’s previous works include musical
scores rendered in weave, or sculptures combining textiles and electronics.
Knitting patterns were a doorway into the algorithmic processes of electronic
music, while sewing patterns were parallels to the diagrams used in building
electronic circuits, and are a visual language Bradley has explored in her arts
practice since 2006
Marcel Proust’s
observation“The remembrance of things past is not necessarily the
remembrance of things as they were” inspired Bradley to visualise
memory expressed as an imperfect picture, on which we have all embroidered our
own threads, colouring experience as we saw them. Here the emotion involved in
remembering contrasts with the automated way in which, for centuries, past
generations have handed down these immutable wisdoms. Such spoken adages were
modified to make them easy to remember and repeat, yet lack the vital quality
of adaptation for the future, by which all things must survive.
My past work with The Mine includes a performance with Chris Weaver, for which we invited artists Jumairy and Sofia Chatsisaranti to collaborate:
