Barrier, ref: 9774-14, Art Textiles
Output: Barrier, ref: 9774-14
Barrier, ref: 9774-14 is the stock-inventory code for a series of 10 modular sculptural components that were initially designed so that they could be variably (re)configured within different installational and exhibition contexts. The broader intention is that the ‘reconfiguration’ process is in effect productive of new pieces, highlighting the way that meaning is arbitrary, accruing value according to the space in which we encounter an artwork and the context of display. More specifically, the work is part of a larger body of studio enquiry that explores the poetics and politics of space through sculptural installations that reference the ubiquitous and often unnoticed everyday functional aspects of the built environment.
In 2015, I was invited to (re)configure the sculptural components as part of the international Art_Textiles
exhibition at The Whitworth Gallery, Manchester (10.10.15 - 31.1.16). Occupying four main galleries, Art_Textiles brought together works dating from the 1960s to the present day by 27 artists from around the world ‘who use textiles as a powerful tool for expressing ideas about the social, political and artistic’. The exhibition included iconic feminist pieces from the 1970s by Magdalena Abakanowicz, Faith Wilding, Miriam Shapiro, Elaine Reichek as well as contemporary works by artists such as Grayson Perry, Tracey Emin and Lubana Himid. A 96 page catalogue with a forward by Maria Balshaw and two invited essays accompanied the exhibition.
In 2020, I (re)configured three of the sculptural components as an intervention within Towneley Museum and Art Gallery, where two of the modular units were sited in front of the highlight of Towneley’s collection, Johann Zoffany’s painting depicting the celebrated 18th century antiquary and collector Charles Townley and Friends in His Library at Park Street, Westminster c1790. A further unit was sited in front of a bronze bust of the less celebrated Lady Alice O’Hagan, nee Alice Mary Towneley (1846-1921) who was the only female to inherit Towneley Hall in 1878 before it was eventually sold to Burnley Corporation in 1901.The intervention itself was also notable as the only work within the art galley produced by a female artist.
- Submitting institution
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University of Chester
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 32-04/622795
- Type
- L - Artefact
- Location
- See Title and brief description
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of production
- October
- Year of production
- 2015
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The modular sculptural components take the form of temporary ‘barriers’, which play between a work of art and functional object. Consciously referencing seminal hard-edged minimalist modular-configurations such as Donald Judd’s floor-based open frame-like structures, these works are upholstered and intricately embroidered through the labour intensive process of darning. Rather than take centre-stage like their minimalist counterparts, they might easily be mistaken for institutional furniture, where the self-effacing labour intensity of their production would go unnoticed.
The research employs a feminist/poststructuralist methodology exploring the marginalisation of textiles, invisible labour and women artists’ historical access to museums and galleries. As modular units, the barriers have the potential to physically define space, delineate and divide, afford significance, dictate movement and alternately either deny or allow access. Articulating space in a physical way, the work aims to interrogate the politics of space and the broader metaphorical connotations of borders and boundaries and their implications in terms of traditional discourses of power. Whilst the modular components afford significance to the space that they delineate, the boundary that they define is clearly contingent and provisional. In drawing attention to their temporary and arbitrary nature, the work prompts us to think about the way that boundaries are not neutral but socially and historically constructed and as such are open to critique and revision.
Within the Whitworth, the space articulated by the upholstered barriers was left empty (suggesting the absence of Textile Art within the art historical canon) save for a hand-embroidered ‘duster’ and ‘dust sheet’ by the artist Susan Collis which similarly involve an enormous amount of hidden labour and play with our perceptions of everyday objects.
Within Towneley Hall, the upholstered barriers were seemingly ‘invisible’ as they protected Zoffany’s ‘important’ work and the eminent subject of his painting the influential art collector Charles Townley.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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