Life/Blood at Dore Abbey
(Click for full image)
Life/Blood is an installation of red hand-knitted wool sculptures installed site responisvely at Dore Abbey, in Herefordshire, from 21 Aug -31 Oct. It was part of Vessel: an art trail in remote rural churches. Seven artists installed their work in seven remote, rural churches between Usk and Hay on Wye. Presented by Art & Christianity with Friends of Friendless Churches, the trail was curated by Jacquiline Creswell
Here's a walkthrough video:
There's another video of my installation here, with some more photos and information, including me knitting inside the installation and talking about it!
(Video: Mud and Thunder @_mudandthunder)
The sculptures were knitted between 2019 & 2023. The original 40 sculptures were knitted for the B-Wing exhibition, in response to a highly atmosphgeric decommisioned prison, in Shepton Mallet in Somerset in 2019. They are unfinished and unravelling. In the prison, it was installed with some other red knitted sculptures as Red is the colour of.... , as a trail in and out of the cells on the first floor of the B-Wing prison block.
The sculptures have subsequently been installed in a number of other unexpected places as well as several galleries in many different ways -vertically, horizontally, draped, tensioned and even spilling out of an antique chest of drawers!
I was delighted when the original 40 sculptures were selected for New Contemporaries 2022.
There are now about 80 long, red knitted sculptures, which were all selected for Wells Art Contemporary in 2023. For this setting, the installation was set up in Wells Cathedral and renamed Life/Blood, to connect with the symbolism of blood as sacrifice but also as the signifier of life in the Christian faith. These knitted sculptures truly are shapeshifters in form and name!
For the Vessel art trail, some of the knitted sculptures were tensioned diagonally in the space, tethered by the curious collection of broken stonemasonry stored in the space.
'Connecting stone to stone like a network of blood vessels, these red, knitted sculptures bring life to an overlooked space, yet they also provoke a range of conflicting responses. Blood symbolises both life and death. The contrast between this graveyard of ancient sculptures and the contemporary forms - stone/wool, grey/red, hard/soft, permanent/impermanent - connects us to our history and reminds us of our mortality. The vulnerability of the formless, unravelling knitting is disquieting, like a fragile thread between life and death.'
I find it very interesting and poignant that the same sculptures can take on so many different forms and meanings, depending on the method of installation and also the context. It has form, but in a way its also formless (Bataille, 1929). Curator Miwon Kwon discusses the ‘impermanence and transience’ of art which is installed in response to ‘one site after another’ (2002, p4)
One delightful feature of the synchronicity between the space at Dore Abbey and the work is that there is a stunning stained glass window which depicts Archangel Michael fighting a red, serpent-like dragon (aka Satan), which looks remarkably like a pile of my red knitting!
Is Archangel Michael slaying a red, knitted dragon? Photo: Mud and Thunder (Click for full image)
Kwon, M (2002) One place after another; site specific art and locational identity, The MIT Press