This statement relates to the "current work" displayed via the Fibre link to the left.
I hope that this statement will be helpful to the many students who visit the site. If more information is required on any aspect of my work, please email me and I will do my best to accomodate you.
Statement
“Tenses” 1 – 4 (1998) are tapestries made initially
in response to the “Peace Process” in Northern Ireland.
Having grown up in Belfast in the 1960’s and 1970’s, it has
taken me nearly 30 years to find a way to express my feelings about the
place and the way it has influenced both my work and my approach to life.
The tapestries are woven with a wool weft on a cotton warp. Barbed wire
was inserted to the weave as it was being woven and this has been held
rigid by securing it with aluminium wire to the wire mesh on which all
four pieces are mounted.
The wire mesh is an important part of the finished works. It relates to
the metal in the weave, compliments and extends the three-dimensional
quality of the work. The three dimensions are also important as the main
theme of the work, that of conflict, is very much a real part of our lives.
Although I am lucky enough to have been only rarely physically affected
by the situation in Northern Ireland when I lived there, my attitudes
at the time and my philosophy in the present have been moulded by my contact
with all that goes on in Northern Ireland, then and now.
In earlier years I often used the Irish landscape as the subject of my
designs for tapestry. I feel now that a part of my reasons for using that
subject matter was to deliberately ignore the troubles and pretend that
life was normal. This is/was a common trait in Northern Ireland –
is, perhaps, an essential human attribute. The length of time I have now
been living away from Northern Ireland (18 years (1998)) has allowed me
to take a more objective viewpoint of the situation and in doing so, I
have been able to examine more closely the reasoning behind my feelings
for the place.
The barbed wire in my tapestries acts, for me, as a symbol of many different
aspects of the troubles in Northern Ireland as well as the difficulties
and fighting in other parts of the world. It acts as a symbol for aspects
of conflict on a more personal level as well and represents the contradictory
nature of conflict in a physical way – the contrast of the materials
used in the work is fascinating on its own. It can be difficult to work
with which in turn can create conflict (along with cuts and bruises).
Although these and other pieces of my work are about conflict, this is
not always recognised. People from a rural background often think more
of the ways in which wire and barbed wire is used in farming than in more
violent situations.
“Dialogue” and “Piece Process” (both
2001) are further developments of this theme and are a more direct response
to what was happening with the peace process in Northern Ireland between
1998 and 2000.
The steel rods of “Dialogue” bend out from the wall as they
rise and as such, wobble significantly if touched. The dialogue between
all parties in any conflict is of a similar nature. “Piece Process”
is named thus because so many of my ideas about the work have come from
doing the work itself.
I have found that the materials I am using in this work dictate a different
approach to developing my ideas. In my more traditionally woven tapestries
I have always taken the design of the work to a relatively finished stage
before weaving with only the final decisions about the piece being made
during the weaving process. However, in using wires and steel mesh etc.
I have found that I want and need to work through my ideas with the materials
themselves.