A Marginal Space -Detail-Helen Terry 2017

New work

May 7, 2017

Although I have not been writing about it here, between visits to Wicken Fen I have been working away on a new group of work. It is a continuation of last year’s “Between the Lines” series in that it repeats the imagery and themes, but is sufficiently different that I have given it its own title, “A Marginal Space”.

There were several aspects of “Between the Lines” that I wanted to develop further so, over several days in January and early February, I filled a sketchbook with collage experiments. Working with paper and on a small scale meant that I could work fast and try out lots of different ideas without getting too precious or hung up on any one of them. And to help me think differently, I set a series of “rules” in opposition to my previous approach. I found it was relatively straightforward to translate what I learned from this exercise into cloth.

I’ve made fourteen pieces of work in this group and spent several days recently photographing them. I love these detail images. They really focus attention on the marks.

A Marginal Space detail 2 Helen Terry 2017

A Marginal Space detail 3 Helen Terry 2017

A Marginal Space detail 4 Helen Terry 2017

A Marginal Space detail 6 Helen Terry 2017

Several pieces from this group will be exhibited at Gallery 57 in Arundel for the exhibition, Gaze, Glimpse: A look at landscape (24 June – 6 August). This is a lovely gallery, run by Ann Symes, and I am thrilled to be exhibiting there alongside a wonderful group of other artists. In fact you can see a preview of the new pieces here.

In the meantime, I also have some work in Bircham Gallery’s current Early Summer Exhibition, which is on until 24 May.

Boro: the fabric of life

August 3, 2015

I travelled to Cologne for the day on Friday to see an exhibition of Boro textiles. This was the same exhibition that was first shown at the Domaine de Boisbuchet in 2013.

First, a word about the photos. The museum allowed photographs provided I did not use flash. Since the textiles were displayed in low light this compromised quality. These images are the clearest I could manage ... with some significant editing to improve sharpness and clarity. Sometimes this is at the expense of colour accuracy.

Some things I learned:

The museum made a link to kesa, robes pieced together by Buddhist monks from cloth they received as alms, originally rags. Ironically, since rich Buddhist followers would often donate precious textiles to show their devotion, kesa were sometimes made from rather splendid, embroidered silks. The exhibition included some gorgeous examples from the museum's own collection.
Japanese peasants originally wore cloth made from local bast fibres - hemp, ramie, mulberry, wisteria, nettle. The softer and warmer cotton became popular in the eighteenth century ... but was only available to the rich. Rural people bought used, damaged cotton clothing from itinerant rag merchants or traders and mended or re-used the cloth.
Sashiko is the term for the running stitch used either to mend cloth or to piece small pieces together into a larger cloth. Originally bast fibre was used. It was only once people gained access to softer, more pliable cotton threads (from the mid 19th century), that the decorative designs and patterns developed that we associate with the term sashiko.

Since I knew I was not going to get good photographs, I made lots of notes and rough drawings of the aspects that interested me. I was particularly interested in the variety of approaches to the stitching. There was no single approach, different examples showing the individual style and skill of the maker(s). Some pieces were so densely stitched that they looked woven, especially where the stitching was close and even. But then later repairs disrupted the original stitch pattern, creating interesting discrepancies. Another example was the complete opposite: the stitching was sparse - tiny stitches, widely spaced, creating a totally different rhythm.

The stitch lines commonly followed the outside edge of the patch and then traced a "square spiral" path into the middle. The most natural way to secure a square patch to a backing using a continuous thread with no stopping or backtracking. Some pieces were stitched with regular, closely spaced lines, others with more irregular, widely spaced lines. Idiosyncratic changes in direction as the stitcher had chosen their route around the cloth made interesting rhythmic patterns. I was struck by one piece where long, loose stitches followed convoluted paths across the patches for which there was no observable logic. Some looked like strange drawings ...

In many places stitches had worn away, leaving gaps in the stitch line or loose threads. Heavily patched areas created overlapping stitch lines that didn't always relate to the visible patch, revealing something about what was happening in the layers beneath it instead. This aspect really appeals to me.

More information:

My previous blog post about the Somerset House exhibition in 2014
Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst, Cologne
Domaine de Boisbuchet
Sri Threads - examples, with information, of boro textiles. Stephen Szczepanek co-curated this exhibition and provided many of the textiles from his private collection.

Stitch marks

March 1, 2015

A little while ago I was talking to someone about a piece of textile work (not my own). I made a comment about the stitching. My companion objected - they viewed the stitches simply as drawn marks. In fact, that was what I had meant - I had been admiring the variety of marks achieved and the way they interacted with the marks in the cloth. But I knew why they had challenged my initial remark and this momentary tension set me thinking.

When people talk about textiles you often hear a focus on technique at the expense of the work itself. I think many people are more comfortable talking about the materials and the way something is made than the ideas behind it, artistic effects or compositional qualities. This is all too common in the textile world but it isn't absent from the fine art world because I've heard this in exhibitions of paintings, photographs, drawings too - people deconstructing the technical aspects of the work - the way it is made - rather than the work itself. And actually there are some works where I wonder whether I would be so engaged if I did not know how they were done. Brice Marden's graphite drawings for example.

So when I commented on the stitches, it sounded as though I was talking about the technique rather than the effect. But in the same way as drawn marks have different qualities, so do stitch marks - and some artists exploit this really well. A stitch has a physical dimension that a drawn mark does not. It has a back as well as a front. It can project into space. The ends may be left trailing or standing out. It follows a trail - so that you can deduce what is happening on one side from what you see on the other. It can serve a purpose - linking or holding things together - creating a relationship between itself and the surface.

Roanna Wells created a piece titled "Withdrawn" for the 2011 Jerwood Drawing Prize in which the marks on the surface were what was left after she had removed all her stitches. A form of erasure drawing. A kind of ghost image. Beautiful and interesting in itself but the way the drawing had been achieved added a deeper resonance.

I am interested in this relationship between image, marks and surface. There are many art works that explore this in really interesting ways. Textiles happen to offer a particularly broad range of ways that artists can do so. I sometimes pause to consider why I work with cloth, dye and stitch rather than other media. The answer in my case is to do with the way the marks - both dyed and stitched - become an integral part of the cloth. They do not just sit on the surface. And the way the cloth itself influences what happens with the dye and the stitch - it is not passive.

The images above are all from previous work - in black and white to emphasise the marks. I have several new pieces of work in progress at the moment and they are all approaching the stitch stage. So it's a good time to be thinking about the kind of marks I want to make and how I want them to relate to the cloth.