knitted monolfilament, knitting needles, monofilament
My beating heart, 2018, knitted monofilament, monofilament, knitting needles,
installed at disquiet, Walcot Chapel, Bath 18-23 September 2018
(Click for full image)
My beating heart is a site-responsive installation of red monofilament installed in the porch at Walcot Chapel, Bath for 'disquiet', a joint exhibition with Clare Thatcher, 18 -23 Sept 2018. Suspended within a network of red monofilament is a small, hand knitted abstract sculpture, my heart, made with the same material. It's still attached to the knitting needles so I could potentially continue to knit it or it could unravel. The unruly lines of the knitted piece present a stark contrast to the almost invisible geometric lines dividing the space.
Walcot Chapel is a old mortuary chapel surrounded by a decommissioned graveyard. It's a listed building so for the installation, I was only able to use attachments that were already in place, so these rather random fixings dictated the form of the installation to some extent. I installed this work over three days of the exhibition as performative making. I see it as a form of drawing.
It was inspired by my experience of Supra Ventricular Tachycardia (SVT), an arrhythmia of the heart. In 2014 I started having frightening episodes involving elevated heart beats, resulting in extreme dizziness. In July 2015 I had a medical procedure, an oblation, where part of the heart is cauterised to stop this unpleasant and potentially life-threatening condition. The setting for this work, with the backdrop of the graveyard seems very poignant. My heart has been fine since the oblation, but I won't forget that scary beating heart!
Here's a video with more images: