Unravelled – Contemporary Knit Art

I am about to start the knitting and crochet samples for the next exercise and before I begin I am going to look at this new book that I have just bought.

Unravelled – Contemporary Knit Art – Charlotte Vannier

I’ve looked through the book to identify the artists that I both engage with and those that I didn’t. I’m learning that sometimes it’s the ones that I don’t immediately like that I learn the most from. I’m going to record below specific practices and images that I think are significant and appropriate.

organic

I’m surprised by how many of the artists have taken up crochet because it allows them to let the work develop as its being made. They are in a constant cycle of vision, make, problem, adjust, make, vision, problem, adjust and on its goes.

Agnes Sebyleau works in this way to make very organic, fantasy figures in a very natural and simple palette. The most interesting section in her chapter is when she talks about crochet being misunderstood and not given the same consideration as other artistic media which is true but I also think is changing because of artists like her. Sebyleau’s work is conceptual and thought provoking, it’s not about technique. She crochets badly (in her own words) and uses twine from DIY stores. It what she is expressing and creating with these tools that makes what she does art.

Notes: tight fine stitches that create solid structural lumps and bumps. Household yarn.

Cecile Dachary is also documented as working in this organic way when she crochets. She works with a very tiny hook in an almost trancelike state. A significant point is made then, when using crochet in this way ‘there is no need to count stitches, unlike knitting. improvisation seems to happen by itself’. Dachery’s work appeals to me because it works with the themes of life, the body and love. There are clear echos of the work of Louise Bourgeois.

Notes: cotton yarn, often household or domestic. Uses crochet to emphasise volume and shape.

Knitting by contrast need a little more skill, crochet is fairly easy to pick up and manage but for knitting you need to be more dexterous. That’s in my opinion anyway. I knit well because I learn in my teens and refined my technique by knitting on a regular basis, I also crochet well but I’ve only been doing that for a few years.

This difference is highlighted in the chapter on Tracey Widdess who makes phantasmagorical masks that are a mix of imagination and characters from books, films etc. She states ‘It took ages to reach this level of competence’, her work requires this level of ability and as I look at her work I can see an incredible number of different knitting stitches combined in innovative combinations to make something far more interesting than sweaters and blankets.

Notes: kitsch colours, solid and lace patterns, fine yarns doubled and trebled up to create the right thickness.

installation

One of the things that really struck me when looking through the book was how adaptive knitting and crocheting is in terms of scale. Some artists use it to make small delicate and sometimes very recognisable objects, for example Clemence Joly’s sushi and others go huge and make amazing and awe inspiring installations and the book has chapters on several of them.

I’m not immediately drawn to the work of Joana Vasconcelos, much of it has a messy quality to it that I don’t engage with but you can’t fail to be impressed by the scale of and breath of her practice. She has taken the humble crochet hook and used it to make statement after statement on the roles and cultural history of women. She uses traditional materials in most of her pieces, adding then lights and cables and even once making a monumental chandelier with 25,000 tampons. I believe, like Louise Bourgeois she is an inspiration to all artists looking to respond to the cultural history of women.

Notes: don’t be frightened to mix materials.

Another artist that I was drawn to and who also creates monumental installations is Ashley V. Blalock. She is also one of many artists in this book who seem to work from a place of compulsion; with has so many ideas in their heads that they fear they will run out of time before they have bought all of them to light. I am also working with the fear of running out of time at the moment.

Notes: thread rather than yarn, very small or very large structures.

Performance

The portable nature of knitting and crochet lends itself well to performance art. In a piece called Jockstrap Ben Cuevas sat in a men’s locker room and knitted himself a jockstrap to make a statement about the sexism stereotypically inherent in knitting. This is another side to current trends in knitting, as well as being used by female artists to explore and respond to their cultural histories its potential is also being recognised and successfully implemented by men in a very similar way.

The structural and tactile potential of the knitted item lends itself well to themes based on the physical form. What is particularly interesting to me is that the pieces produced are not always comfortable to view or imagine, which is not something you expect from a craft traditionally used to make clothing and blankets. In this book the most striking of the artists playing with disturbing themes is Casey Jenkins. She is very outspoken and not afraid to shock by using degrading slang words, images of bondage and menstrual blood in her work. One of her performances called Casting off my womb which was completed over a period of 28 days (a full menstrual cycle) is covered in this book. I am astonished by what Jenkins did; she sat and knitted yarn she was drawing up between her legs into a long scarf . She did this without pants so that as the time went on her menstrual blood was collected on the yarn to create a pattern on the scarf. Most people would be, and were appalled, it’s so very intimate but that is what engages me. It’s the bravery that I see and applaud not the attention seeking that she was accused of. Periods, childbirth, the menopause, depression and so on, these are all subjects that are still taboo and often talked about in private; quietly in small groups, the internet is slowly changing all of this but it’s still all done hiding behind a barrier. Jenkin’s doesn’t do this, like Tracey Emin she gets out there and says it right from the heart.

Notes: political themes.

Inspiration

This is a fascinating book and I have only just scrapped the surface of what it has to offer. It has given me some innovative ideas about the materials I am going to use in the exercise on knitting and crochet. I have a large stash of knitting materials and I was finding it difficult to break out of the idea of using them.