Tuesday 21 October 2008

Exhibition extended!

Take a ball of thread... has been extended until Saturday November 1 at Pablo Fanque.
So exciting!

Take a Ball of Thread... exhibition open!

Take a ball of thread... opened two weeks ago at Pablo Fanque. It was a fantastic exhibition opening, I couldn't have hoped for a more lovely night and my warmest thanks to everyone who came along not just to the opening, but to everyone who has been to the exhibition since. I have been quite overwhelmed by the lovely feedback from people who have seen Take a ball of thread...

I would also like to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone who has been involved with the project, my extended family and friends. Most particularly, thank you to Mark for putting up with me being all about the jewels for the past few weeks, Francesca at Pablo Fanque and Debbie for being so supportive and helping out in so many ways and to Suzanne and Martin for the stunning catalogue.

I will post some installation shots soon, in the meantime, here are some pictures from the opening night:




As you can see, I look really nervous and there is still lots of thread left... I decided to show the rest of the ball as it gives context to the work made from it on the opposite wall of the gallery. Despite probably needing a break from pink, I miss having it in my studio and am itching to keep making with it - the enforced separation has been quite strange.


I have been playing with black thread since the exhibition opened - all the funny little half used black spools of thread lying around in my sewing box and various other, more unexpected places in my house. The thread I have been playing with has no precise place of origin - there is no real memory of it coming into my life, unlike other found objects I have used in the past which are very specifically located in time and place. I know some of them probably belonged to my Grandmother and Mother, to ex-partners or flatmates perhaps, who can say. They remind me a little bit of the black umbrellas that seem to come in and out of my life. I am excited about using black and very interested in how the colour works with the forms - the black looks a lot like hair - an ongoing fascination for me and the initial notion behind the pieces I have been sketching and sampling is a meditation on loss.

I pretty much used up all the black thread lying about the house on the weekend and so, to fill the thready gap in my life, today I bought 5 kilometes of black thread (oddly enough I have just discovered that I walk past a sewing thread wholesaler every day on my way to work). This ball of black is no where near the size of the pink one when I started and much smaller than what is left of the pink... maybe a third of the size, I am not sure how to feel about this. The vastness of the pink is overwhelming at times.

The black thread is being used to make some pieces for Pablo Fanque's next exhibition which I have been invited to participate in, the exhibition is called Recycled, renewed, reborn

Post Script: Not half an hour after I posted this, I lost my bag containing not only my latest black umbrella, but also the ball of black thread. I was so preoccupied, sitting on the bus writing and doodling away about ideas of loss and how to attack the new black thread, that I left my bag on the seat. Now I really have something to think about.