a collaboration with Helen Acklam in Studio G6 for BV Open Studios, Bristol, 4-6 April 2025
hand-knitted mixed yarn, voile, latex, soil, clay, coal, used clothing, found netting, upholstered shelf, and stones
makeshift, detail
(Click for full image)
folding
unfolding
enfolding
enclosing
embodying
tending
cradling
baring
tensing
shaming
abjecting
collapsing
fragmenting
settling
fleshling
makeshift
A bringing together of materials, process, work, ideas and all the ruminations along the way.
Both artists use already-meaningful materials, and an intuitive and embodied practice to explore their personal experiences alongside universal themes. They are both interested in noticing and investigating the space between - between systems, binaries, boundaries - and in this space, between each other and the shifting forms and conversations.
Helen and I met up in the studio over the two weeks leading up to the BV Open Studios. We each brought some of our work to make a collaborative installation. After much thought, conversation, lots of climbing of ladders, good humour and several experiments, we created makeshift as a collaboration as it appears in these images and the video above.
It doesn't feel as if its a fully finished piece, but rather as if the Open Studios was a punctuation mark, a comma, maybe? This work is one of several ideas that we played with and we have plans to try out some more of our ideas over time.
I think we both feel we have benefited greatly from working together. As well as enjoying the process of working together, I was reminded how powerful it can be to work with contrasting materials, as I have in the past, for example during my MA when I worked with steel, concrete and lead to make Parts of me 2021. I would like to work with these different materials again. I would also like to work with latex. It's also very clear from the feedback below that particular combinations of items have particular associations, for example, the netting and the rocks together obviously made many people think of the sea or beach.
Special thanks to Helen for being such a great collaborator and for letting me sublet her studio.
Thank you to everyone who visited us in G6. Overall, there were more than 5000 visitors to the Open Studios over the weekend. And here's some of the feedback we received from our visitors:
‘Fragile ecosystems.’
‘It’s on the brink of collapse.’
‘Things don't always happen as planned.’
‘It reminds me of Cecilia Vicuna’s work at Tate Modern.’
‘Sea vibes! Wow. A shipwreck. Diving through kelp forests.’
‘It’s like bodies caught in a net.’
‘Aged, motheaten, left out to dry. Simple, human-made, abandoned.
Collecting more and more human activity. Tangled together! Undifferentiated ownership, it all comes from human hands. Tangled ownership. All together it becomes something other.’
‘It makes me think of poached eggs.’
‘What’s it meant to be?’
‘It reminds me of images of protein strings in biochemical research for ovarian cancer.’
‘It's beautiful - all the textures!’
‘Fragile. Ephemeral.’
‘Eva Hesse?’
‘Breaking free.’
‘Like under the sea.’
‘It’s like outer space.’
‘Wow!’
‘Tentacles ...’
‘The colour reminds me of
asteroids.’
‘It’s like a mermaid thrashing, trying to get out.’
‘These fluffy textures touch a really naive, childike part of me that makes me feel held. It’s visceral.’
‘I see the seashore. I was imagining the walls painted blue and a sandy, pebbly shore.’
‘It’s like the seaside, sea-weedy.’
‘It’s catching something.’
‘It’s like being in the middle of a spider’s web… actually, it’s the spider’s web in Lord of the Rings and definitely a threat!’
‘Walking through it heightens the senses.’
‘It makes me think of Louise Bourgeois.’