How To Make A Patchwork Quilt

While working upon my current pieces, I came across 'Let Me Tell You', right, in the Eldon Square Shopping Centre, Newcastle. The piece, created by the Northern Engagement into Recovery from Addiction Foundation (NERAF) aims to present various stories surrounding 'the good and bad days' of caring for someone recovering from addiction. I was instantly reminded here of the 1995 films 'How to Make an American Quilt' - working on her master's thesis and unsure of her recent engagement, 26 year old Finn decides to spend the summer with her grandmother and great aunt, where she meets a quilting bee of local women working upon a quilt for her wedding, and, in joining them, hears tales of romance and sorrow, as they 'question of whether monogamous life long marriage is a realistic goal'. As suggested by Sally J. Scholz, 'society perpetuates itself through the rituals and signs that constitute the 'symbolic order'', and these are learned through language; she highlights the phallocentric nature of our use of language, offering examples of marital titles, and customarily patronymic family names. As such quilts were a common wedding gift, often utilising sentimental fabrics from memorable events in the lives of the makers, I felt a female craft so strongly linked with the traditionally phallogocentric ritual of marriage could both compliment and contradict the contemporary dating adverts, while the use of bedding was loaded in itself with suggestions - as claimed in Shakespeare's Othello, females are 'players in [their] housewifery, and housewives in [their] bed' - ultimately, women only go to "work" when then go to bed, suggesting a sense only of sexual worth. This "housewife-whore" opposition references a view of women only in terms of satisfying male desire, and an 'active/male and passive/female’ position - even through language, women are still considered in relation to the way they are "seen". As considered by Catherine Redfern and Kristin Aune in their text 'Reclaiming the F Word; The New Feminist Movement', 'a girl can't win. If she doesn't portray herself as 'sexy' and desirable, she's called frigid. Yet if she's sexually active, she's a slut... women learned to see themselves as sexual objects, not subjects'. Developing from my earlier attempts, I began drawing upon adverts both looking for partners, and those advertising the sexual services of women. Taking these phrases out of context, and with no representation of the speaker, it is never made explicit as to the sex or gender of either speaker or reader.

'Untitled' (2012) embroidery on appropriated textiles

'Untitled' (2012) embroidery on appropriated textiles

Elizabeth Price; 'HERE'

While back in Newcastle, I was able to view the latest works on show at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art - after speaking to friends, I was particularly looking forward to experiencing the video pieces of Elizabeth Price in her exhibition 'HERE'. Price's practice sees her appropriate existing film, photography, music and text to create 'immersive video installations' which explore our commodity culture and consumerism. Upon being lead into a darkened room, three works were spread across three screens, 'Choir', 'West Hinder', and probably my favourite piece of the exhibit, the 2009 work 'User Group Disco', below; here we are presented with a 'Hall of Sculptures' in which various consumer goods are combined with text and the almost surreal addition of A-Ha's 'Take On Me'.

Elizabeth Price, USER GROUP DISCO, 2009 from Contemporary Art Society on Vimeo.

I recognised the ending quote, which suggests we will realise that we are all 'a mere appearance, dreamt by another' as a reference to Jorge Luis Borges' 'The Circular Ruins' - the story tells the tale of a wizard who dreams of a young man, and calls upon the God of Fire to bring him into existance, on the condition he accustoms him to reality. Sent to live in a distant temple, the young man becomes famous for his ability to walk through fire unharmed; the wizard hears of these stories, and visits his creation to find the temple ablaze. Walking into the flames he notices he remains unharmed - it is 'with relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he too was a mere appearance, dreamt by another.' Such themes of undefined reality and idealism I feel are clearly mirrored within Price's work. 'User Group Disco' questions the nature and language of categorisation and draws attention to the classification of objects, which I believe forces us to question whether our perception of reality is an elaborate illusion created through language. Utilising text appropriated from celebrated male authors, I found the complex weaving and subversion of various sources a great area for contemplation in relation to my own work.

Appropriation has always been a key aspect of my work; taken from the title of a BBC debate, 'Is Porn Bad For Society?', below, was inspired by a comment made on the show, in which one speaker described women in the porn industry as 'blow up dolls made of flesh'; by merging a mould of my mouth and jaw and a mannequin's head to create the bust of a sex doll. Similar to the mannequins seen through out Fassbinder's 'The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant', these figures represent a relationship based upon complete subordinance, and a master-slave relationship detrimental to the sexual position of women. By subverting this symbol of female domination into an object of decoration via the use of traditional "feminine" crafts, we are forced to reassess the presentation of female sexuality. As Lakoff suggests 'speech about women implies an object, whose sexual nature requires euphemism, and whose social roles are derivative and dependent in relation to men. The personal identity of women thus is linguistically submerged', and the the direct nature of the text in this work, similar to the work of artists such as Kruger and Emin, leaves us unsure as to the speaker and of to whom the "I" refers to - the sexualised yet dominated "female", or the audience for viewing her in such a way.

'Is Porn Bad For Society?' and details (2011) mannequin's head, plaster strips, appropriated and embroidered textiles, buttons

Developing from this earlier work, I began to consider the importance phrases in which the signifer has no fixed signified, and as such vary from each discursive instance. As presented by Kaja Silverman in 'The Subject of Semiotics' 'the signifer "you" addressed by one person to another immediately translates in the mind of the second person into "I"... "I" derives its value from "you"... just as "black" refers to "white", or "male" to "female".' With this in mind, the use of pronouns such as "I" and "you" present us with the chance to subvert speaker/audience positions, and challenge ideas of gendered speech. The piece below, taken from an advert for a "call girl" company, when taken from its original context, has no fixed speaker, and as such no fixed gender.

'I Wanna Make You Come' (2012) embroidery on appropriated textiles

Eye Object Private View

Eye Object; featuring works from Georgina Low, Mary Lister, Eve Matthews, Katherine Miller Craig, Jennifer Morgan, Gemma Murray and Rosa Nolan-Warren.

I was rather startled today to come across an article regarding a woman who had used Facebook to pose as a man in order to sexually assault young females; it seemed incredible to me that she could "perform" the gender so well, with the culprit herself claiming she 'wanted to become "the perfect boy"' for the girls she became involved with. If, as Sarah Salih claims in relation to Judith Butler's thinking 'gender is "a regulated process of repetition" taking place in language', we rely upon language to order our reality. Will Hill highlights the 'contradictions that exist between words and images, and thus between description and representation', yet via channels of communication such as Facebook and online chat rooms, we need not even match up to our declared identity - as seen in this instance, be it in a more dangerous manner, access to mass media and cyberspace has given us the chance to play with and even create our own identity, in which we can construct ourselves through language. Language is used to distinguish us from the "Other", and, as proposed by writers such as Fanon and Sartre, it is through the look of the other that we come into being, explored in the previous appropriated text works of Glen Ligon. After discussing Ligon's pieces within 'Weighted Words' exhibition with a friend, he directed me to the embroidered text messages of 'Ginger Anyhow' - this method of laboriously creating a permanent form of such passing and ultimately disposable words brought to mind an essay I had recently read entitled 'Memory Embroidered', in which it is suggested the ritualistic nature of craft itself can be translated into a form of dialogue. Jean de La Fontaine claims 'ritual expresses cultural values because 'it 'says' something and therefore has meaning as part of a non-verbal system of communication', and I believe it is this ''oral-pictorial' intercommunication' with which these personal messages were presented to us, giving no idea of who had written or received them, that is of particular interest to me. It was as I was considering this kind of "voice with no face" that I came across the dating section of a local newspaper and I began to contemplate how we present ourselves to others, and the ways in which the language used in such personal adverts can be used to analyse the psychology behind "Lonely Hearts". Continuing from my earlier research into Butler, the performitivity of speech acts and how we declare ourselves, I found these dating adverts an interesting area of consideration, as explored in the piece below.

'Janette' (2012) embroidery on appropriated textiles

While I was unsure about the success of this work in its very lateral presentation of a chosen advert, I did wish to refine the use of embroidered words, perhaps in a more abstracted sense; I felt there was was strong potential in the use of this appropriated text, possibly selecting certain phrases instead to highlight the effect of certain words and their gendered connotations. In his essay 'Language and Women's Place', Robin Lakoff discusses both the ways in which women are expected to speak, and the ways in which they are spoken of - Lakoff suggests that certain euphemisms exist in language used to talk about women, notably "lady", which he claims does not hold the same "unpleasant or embarrassing" sexualised connotations of "woman". From the work below, a section of one woman's personal advert, it could be proposed that these connotations effect the way women declare themselves, and how they wish to be seen by the "Other".

'Talking Like a Lady' (2012) embroidery on appropriated textiles

Weighted Words

Humans, as linguistic beings, require language in order to be - as suggested by Butler, a body not yet given a name or social definition is not yet accessible to us. One comes to exist by dependency upon the address of the other, and, as proposed by philosopher Frantz Fanon, we cannot exist individually in the context of here and now, but come to represent and be understood in the light of our race, ethnicity and gender as a whole. The work of Glenn Ligon currently on display at the Zabludowicz Collection's 'Weighted Words' exhibition address such issues surrounding the construction of race, gender and sexuality. The gallery claimed the exhibit wished to 'focus on the affect of language' His text-based paintings 'draw on the writings and speech of diverse figures', such as the neon work 'Warm Broad Glow II', left, which quotes from “Melanctha,” a 1909 novella by Gertrude Stein. I enjoyed the manner in which Ligon had appropriated such phrases, removing them from their original context to question the important relationship between what is said or declared, and who declares it. Such works reminded me of the speech act pieces of Sharon Hayes, and of the account given in 'Domesticating Barbie: An Archaeology of Barbie, Material Culture and Domestic Ideology', of the 1970 Women's Strike for Equality 'when a young girl raised a sign reading "I AM NOT A BARBIE DOLL"'. The relationship between what is declared and the declarer is a one I am particularly interested in exploring, specifically in relation to gender, and the manner in which language is used to define and, in a sense, govern us in society.