Red Work & Wit of the Stitch (2014, 2016) [multi-component output with contextualising information]
- Submitting institution
-
Bath Spa University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 3434
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- Red Work: Waterside Arts Centre, Manchester, England and other locations. Wit of the Stitch: Ruthin Craft Centre, Wales and other locations.
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of first exhibition
- -
- Year of first exhibition
- 2014
- URL
-
https://doi.org/10.17870/bathspa.c.5306447.v2
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The catalyst for this portfolio was a Redwork quilt in ‘American Beauty’, an exhibition of American 19th Century craft at the American Museum in 2009. Inspired by their simple linear depictions of everyday life, in newly affordable red thread, they appeared as an instagram of their time. Howard explored the possibilities of these traditional techniques to create a new series of textile works for her solo touring exhibition Red Work in 2014 at the Waterside, Manchester and subsequently Wit of the Stitch in 2016, Ruthin Craft Centre, Wales. Howard’s research asks 3 questions:
1. Can the techniques of Red Work be updated to contribute to contemporary storytelling?
2. Can embroidery act as a communication tool to express socio political and cultural values?
3. What is the potential of drawing and digital processes within embroidery to forge new kinds of image making?
Red Work (2014) featured framed textile works and objects, together with 2 large immersive wall hangings, with an accompanying sound element, created from multiple, red and blue stitched, autobiographical sketches of daily life, sequenced as in the 1880s Red Work quilts. Combining experimental printing processes with traditional Red Work techniques, gestural marks from notes, doodles, and children’s drawings are elevated and enlarged to become the landscapes for her narratives. Exhibiting with 7 other international textile artists in Wit of the Stitch (2016), 4 new commissions extended these methods further, focusing on the capture of observed behaviours to find new ways of expressing contemporary narratives. Red Work was
the basis for a symposium Textile Matters hosted at BSU in 2016.
Reinterpreting the history of figurative textiles, and keeping drawing central to her practice, Howard presents a lo fi permanence, in stitch, to the transience of curated contemporary life and opens up new accessible ways of communicating information about ourselves.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
