A Special Task

I wasn't planning to post anything this week as I'm working on other things that, although not urgent, I feel a sense of urgency to complete, but the sun is too good and rare to waste. I just had to recharge, grab a pen and paper, and jot something down about what I'm working on. 

My own work plans are on a bit of a hiatus while I have the great undertaking of contributing to various aspects of activities amounting to retrospective and memorial events for my dear friend, the artist Sally Madge. I'm compiling an audio patchwork of testimonies generously provided by people who've known and been impacted by Sally in some way, and I am in the process of finishing textile artworks Sally had been working on for some time. The aim is that an exhibition and symposium will take place in November around the first anniversary of her death.

The textile work is something Sally talked about when she kindly guested on Audiovisual Cultures podcast in 2019. Her idea for the finished work had shifted somewhat since then. Entitled Scatter, Sally was making scatter cushions of all shapes and sizes from the fabrics she'd spent decades gleaning from shorelines. Some of the fragments had been out at sea for many years and I dread to think how they got there. There are remnants of very old, perhaps Georgian or Victorian ladies undergarments, cardigans, baseball caps, waterproof work trousers (from oil rigs, tankers or fishing crews?), netting and meshes, children's t-shirts, tents, all sorts. 

Were their former owners forgetful or unfortunate? Did something unthinkable or sinister happen? Are those bite marks? How old is it? Does that say Debenhams?

So many unsolvable mysteries brought together in patchwork quilting. The cushions carrying so many stories are a motley crew as well - lumpy and bumpy, bloated and baggy, stressed and loose. Some were completed by Sally, and her other friend Sara and I are finishing them off in the spirit in which she began. It is sad and happy work. A collaboration I never got to have while Sally was alive. I hope she'd approve of what I'm coming up with. 

For the rest of the loose and partially joined fragments, I'm doing something a little different with the installation in mind. It's a barely begun work-in-progress and it's being led by the material, so we'll see where it takes me. 

I feel as if I ought to be anxious at the weight of all this, but I actually feel calm and intuitive about it and I am contented and relaxed while working on it. Listening back over Sally's recording to polish it up for the autumn, I am reminded that Sally had pointed out some time ago that artists often revert back to their childhood interests and ways of doing things. My survival mechanism since March 2020 has been to do just that without remembering Sally saying this. I spent countless hours as a young person making things and always using up scraps to make yet more things while listening to the radio. Now I make things, and always use up the scraps somehow, while listening to podcasts. I may have been swept away from art a long time ago, but I seem to have washed up on its shores lately.

I don't know what Sally's more established friends will make of what I'm creating with what got left behind, but I feel that Sally would encourage my instincts and assure me to feel free to play and experiment. I certainly feel the potential gravity of the imagined stories behind the fragments.

Was your wearer lost at sea? Did they make it after losing you? How old are you? How old was your wearer? Were they seeking refuge? Were they on holiday? Did they realise you were missing? How long were you in the water? How long were you caught in the seaweed tangle on the rocks? How long were you buried in the sand now gleefully clogging up the sewing machine?

So, yes, I'm a little preoccupied and have not returned to prior unfinished business of my own. Instead, I'm helping address someone else's, and am grateful for the opportunity and honour of it.

Detail from Scatter