Site Research AND Films about clotheslines (Roberta Cantow) and quilts, and Kathy Acker, and Marni

Site

Site - responsive

Site-specific

Memories; personal/collective

History/connotations

Community bond

Who lives here/who occupies the space/who owns the space

Site is a physical space but also associated with TIME and BODIES

My video: Dressing up to stay in

Fashion and dressing up is my tool to stay engaged and happy and enjoy myself.

I used this tool in my isolated teenage years in North Wales and am returning to this in Lockdown.

Feedback: Wardrobe is a space. Corridor functions as something else now. Repeated gestures, in front of the audience. Made people smile, good energy. First place I go to in Humour - is that my tendency? Repeated ritual in our living space. Who I am sharing this with. The location of home.

Site: Intervening into the chosen site

Craftivist Collective

See the link below for the further research. 

I love the focus on slow craft and how this gives you space to contemplate the issues more effectively and thoroughly. I have used hand stitching last year to give myself the space to consider our pandemic-locked away-situation. The recent passing of a friend in isolation was very difficult and I gave myself the gift of peaceful craft to think about her and put emotions into the work I was making. 

The community on my road are also quite a crafty bunch and several of the local streets have created a bunting project to lift spirits in Lockdown since we took all our Xmas decorations down. I made my own bunting with a rainbow collection of coat hangers collected from a recycling bin with donated textiles from neighbours from my last project. It reads; 'HANG IN THERE'.

https://craftivist-collective.com/

Mini Fashion Protest
During London Fashion Week, 

Somerset House 2011, 
Cross Stitch on Cotton  

Also see the recent documentary, Craftivism: Making a Difference on iPlayer. 

A Common Name 

By Paige Smith

The artist distributed ‘geodes’ to people via social-media and post; wanted to encourage people to explore their surrounding and find treasured in their daily life. 

Participants can plant hand-made 'geodes' into the gaps and cracks of city pavements, brick walls and pipes. 

Geodes: Made out of resin and paper. 

Spidertag, Spain

Abstract graffiti on the wall, street and the sidewalk block. 

Basic materials needed are nails and pure wool, the artist often combines them with other media such as spray paint or printed photos. 

The work tries to establish a dialogue between the landscape and the street art. 

Miss Cross Stitch, Germany 

https://makezine.com/2012/09/28/interview-miss-cross-stitch/

Site: Audience and Participants

Yarn Bombing  by Kaye

 

Kaye brings the craft of crocheting to street art, where traditionally, walls and fences have been the canvas for graffiti artists.

Yarnbombing started when Magda Sayeg, from Texas, covered a door handle and a traffic sign outside her clothes shop.  Hundreds of people stopped to take photographs 

Site: Memory and History

Sheila Hicks 

Sheila Hicks is known for her works based on her research on Latin American archaeological sites and textiles traditions in there. She photographed extensively through travelling Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil and many more. 

In Venice Biennale 2017,  pure pigmented fibers were places on the ground, invited the audience to rest and enjoy the tactile discovery. The work reflected on her interest in architectural space. 

https://www.labiennale.org/en/biennale-channel/biennale-arte-2017-sheila-hicks-intervista

Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957-1996)

American artist, Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s calm, minimal installations often reflect on his own experience with AIDS. He is known for his conceptual, participatory and process-based works. 

 Untitled (Loverboy) (1989)

https://www.felixgonzalez-torresfoundation.org/works/untitled-loverboy2

To get hold of once Uni is open...

• Street Craft: Guerrilla Gardening/Yarnbombing/Light Graffiti Street Sculpture/ and More, Riikka Kuittinen (2015), Thames and Hudson

• Viva Arte Viva: 57th International Art Exhibition La Biennale Di Venezia (Viva arte viva : Biennale Arte 2017), Christian Marcel (2017), Exhibition catalogue 

• One Place after Another : Site Specific Art and Locational Identity, Miwon Kwon (2004)  MIT Press

My Research into site:

Film by Roberta Cantow: Clotheslines 1981, New York

This is at once site specific, being shot in New York, and another international since we all do laundry. She depicts the sites we might undertake our laundry.

I loved a ladies story how she ties satin ribbons around her laundry in her closet because she knew that when she had guests they would look in her closet to compare and contrast with their own. Laundry for the housewife could be the presentation of themselves and how they want people to see them. There was both pride and shame in the visible laundry.

Her underwear is too fancy for her husband, she must be having an affair.

Arranging your clotheslines by colour etc.

If your husband's shirts had a spot, or your child's top had a spot, you were the worst.

Laundry blowing is like a sculpture or the ghosts of the wearer.

Pat Ferrero: Quilts in Women's Lives 1981

The stories of different women's experience in quilt making, how site led them to quilt, or memory and history encourages them to continue the tradition. Quilts as art, as a passion, as a tradition, as an heirloom.

https://www.folkstreams.net/film-detail.php?id=37

Kathy Acker writes about 1970s New York. This is her site for her work and inspiration.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFRT6T7YLCs

https://artreview.com/ar-september-2019-review-kathy-acker/

https://www.invaluable.com/blog/sustainability-and-art/

Images of Marni - these clothes are too big, they hang on the models, like walking laundry, the sculptures come to life.

My husband does our washing and hangs the clothes. 

We do not iron (apart from special occasions). 

His Grandmother passed away 2 years ago (aged 98), but still used a mangle. 

We would never own a tumble drier.

https://www.upcyclist.co.uk/2018/07/best-art-made-from-waste-cds/

Bruce Munro (also site specific!)

http://www.karolapezarro.nl/

Community Work

The Rows of terraced houses where I live have found it important to lift spirits throughout the last year by producing art for the windows. These have ranged from the very simple to the quite spectacular. Rainbows, Advent calendars, 12 days of Christmas, and now a bunting project. I collected a rainbow range of coat hangers from a neighbours recycle bin in the first Lockdown and using the donated fabric  from my neighbourhood quilt project I have made bunting which reads 'Hang In There'. People have come to the garden to say how much they love it and have been inspired by it, and it seems a simple and humorous idea has been effective. 

From a google search when thinking about my feedback from assessments;

Artworks and archaeological things share the ontological problem of how to make something new out of materials. Artists work on materials to generate sensations never before experienced. Archaeologists work on a more circumscribed body of material to produce a past not thought of or experienced before.

Site Project: we had an hour to make an art work in any medium relating to site. Site is a very broad concept and ultimately can be applied to any artwork; site of production, site work is situated it, site leads to a certain research plan or development, portrayal of a site, objects from a site etc etc

I have been thinking about my use of Fashion as an escape, and had been thinking about how I dress up to stay in. So I changed into as many outfits as I could, each with an item of leisurewear in, within the time. My son couldn't simply watch and he joined in the fashion show too. My only aim was to make people smile or relate, we need a bit of a break at the moment. The feedback was just that!