Used duvet, zip, stitch, hand knitted yarn from someone else’s stash, found netting
I was very grateful to be part of the Merge residency at Black Swan Arts in Frome for 7 weeks, in January and February 2025. I was one of 13 artists in residence and we were all relatively recent graduates of Bath Spa University. The residency was instigated and curated by Bath Spa lecturer, Lucy Gundry and its focus was on textiles and collaboration.
While I was in residence, my intention was to research ideas of comfort and discomfort in relation to used textiles. So, I started working with a dirty, stained duvet which someone had given me.
Duvets are normally associated with comfort, safety and the body but when they’re stained and dirty they can also produce strong feelings of discomfort, an abject response.
Stitching into the duvet in the gallery, in public, stimulated some interesting conversations with the other artists, volunteers and visitors… and got me thinking about monster bodies…
I was very pleased to collaborate with one of the other artists-in residence, Eleanor Powell, facilitating a group discussion about ‘My monster’. We were delighted to be joined by the local poetry group,‘Words at the Black Swan’ on Facebook, who subsequently wrote a number of poems in response to the conversation. (See below)
Preparing for the discussion prompted me to revisit some of my research from the last ten years about the abjection, leakiness, dirt and disgust associated with women’s bodies. I also finally started to read Lauren Elkin’s fabulous book Art monsters: unruly bodies in feminist art…
Subsequently, for the Merge Showtime, I made my very own Monster body out of the old duvet, and installed her, reclining in a hammock-like structure made with found netting, with multiple tentacular knitted sculptures spilling out of the zip stitched into her torso…
I have been knitting long thin sculptures over the last couple of months, using a selection of whites and beiges from another large stash of mixed yarn that had been collected by a friend’s late stepmother. I had been thinking about women being invisible as I knitted them, but, during the residency, I was reminded of how women’s bodies are seen by some as abject due to their leakiness – milk, blood, tears... and maybe emotions? So I decided to trial this installation, with the knittings pouring out of the stitched sculpture, pooling on the floor. It makes me think that maybe the work should be entitled The monster within?
I’m sure my monster body will shapeshift into other forms before too long. Watch this space!
Another delightful collaboration was with Betsy Bond, another of the artists-in-residence. A number of her tiny, exquisitely sculpted and stitched people are hidden in this installation. Most are partly camouflaged, climbing, chilling, hiding… Just two of them are red. I feel as if the addition of these small figures changes the way the scale of the work is perceived. They are definitely a brilliant addition to the installation!
Thank you to everyone involved in the residency – Lucy, the other artists, the poets, the staff and volunteers at Black Swan Arts and all our lovely visitors.
Here are 3 poems, written in response to our discussion about monsters during the Merge residency:
The Monster Speaks
No matter where I go, my monster follows me.
Clings to me like a shadow sack
There is no escape, or way to lose it.
However far away I travel, we arrive together.
Sit quietly and my monster speaks, whispering tales from my past.
Sometimes treasures of good deeds done.
Other times, it regales me with actions that still trigger shame.
Befriending my monster, letting it speak, listening and thanking it, quietens it, leaving me to just be present here now.
My monster transformed to a BFG.
Mike Grenville
In this creative world, where does the Monster prowl?
Does the Monster mask itself, in the superior satisfied emotion, in the personal vanity of achievement?
Does the Monster creep, hidden, in the destructive, questioning, ever present doubt?
Does it lie in wait, crouching darkly,
Surrounding?
(A response to a discussion about monsters.)
Hilary Farthing
What am I? Will the mirror tell the truth?
Or does it need enquiring hands to ask questions that should have been answered in youth?
And how can you complete an unknown task?
These are the shapes no one can recognise, not even their own makers, who explain that explanations are forms of disguise, resemblance is fortuitous, and plain is coloured, if you want to think it so.
Monsters lurk everywhere, shadowy forms belying the textures through which they grow, nothing quite so unnatural as norms, while clothes that should conceal only reveal - and must we suffer wounds before we heal?
Mike Rogers
Many thanks to Mike, Mike and Hilary.