15 July- 30 July 2023, Unit BG21, opposite Boswell's cafe, on the ground floor of The Galleries, Broadmead
The space in Bristol was the largest so far. Like Weston,it was rectangular, longer than it was wide. Rather excitingly for me, there was a very large separate room at the back, plus two smaller former changing rooms, and each of these 3 spaces had a mirror in it! This is where I set up my biggest and most ambitious Social knitwork so far.
There were two front windows, with a wide shuttered doorway in between, so it worked very well to have my Living sculptures at the front of the space, with one in one window, two in the other, and the final two nearby, they are certainly eye catching!
Bristol was also the most challenging space for installation, as the ceiling was very high and only had limited places from which I could suspend my work. Oh the joys of site-responsive installation! I used my extremely sophisticated technique of throwing a cuddly toy, with a long piece of string attached to it, over the fixings and then pulling over whatever I was using to suspend my work. It was difficult, and the placings of the air conditioning vents, electrical conduits and sprinkler were quite spread out so it limited what I could hang where. It was hard deciding how to use the space and definitely the most difficult place I've ever installed work, but it was also definitely worth it!
I hung my 3 knitting and PVC Parts of me 2021 sculptures, with chains, in front of the large mirror in the back room, shrouding them with a suspended net. This was mostly because I was worried that visitors might swing on them, or try to climb into them and the fitments they were attached to were not strong enough. I have also been attempting to mark a separation between my sculptures and the participatory parts of the installation, ususally with netting, but it doesn't always work. It's definitely all part of my research. Anyway, I was very pleased with my caged sculptures and their reflections.
I decided I wanted the sculptures to be clearly visible from the doorway, so I constructed a large walkthrough den with the biggest piece of netting just to the left of the door. The net had obviously acquired many more additions from the 3 previous venues, so was hard to hang, but, once again, I enjoyed seeing how it shapeshifted into int's 4th iteration. Hanging it in one place after another means that different parts of the net become more prominent. There are now so many labels attached, I'm still not sure that I've read them all! Above the net, and crawling over the wall, I installed a couple of my knitted Made flesh sculptures.
This decision meant that there was approximately 1/3 of the space between the sculptures and the den. This was where, initially, I set up my imagination station, with a few chairs, a couple of baskets of yarn, knitting needles and pompom makers.
I then set up two netting dens in the two small, mirrored changing rooms, each with a low light. Above one of the dens I hung a couple more sculptures and in the second I placed all the long knitted sculptures, which had been added previously and I had unravelled, in a pile to be added again...
Living sculptures: The invitationto wear my sculptures and to video their performances continues to delight visitors. For Bristol, Robb had changed the programme so that the participant's video shows almost straight away, which is much better.