During the Speed of Thought exhibition, one piece in particular caught my eye: ‘From Memory’ by Evy Jokhova. As I said in the previous post, I was intrigued that an artist might use stitching as a way to conceptualize his or her ideas. In my practice, working with materials seems to be a very pivotal and integral part of the way I learn… so infusing initial sketches with this practice is something I want to experiment more with in the future (definitely not on this scale though…).
This piece is, “a recreation from memory of a tapestry Evy’s mother spent a 1/2 of their entire family savings on in 1991 in Soviet Russia shortly before the Soviet Union collapsed and the Ruble completely devalued.” What struck me about this piece was the contrast of the materials used. The white backing is a banner mesh, which seems very rigid and almost shiny, while the yarn used is a very fuzzy wool. I had to resist the urge to run my fingers across the herringbone and running stitches when I viewed it in the gallery.
This piece was obviously labor intensive- anybody who stitches would know that this practice takes an incredible amount of thought, labor, and effort. It seems as if the artist is recalling her memories through her stitching process, which is often cathartic. Viewing this process reminded me that in my midterm review I wanted to investigate other ways that humans face restriction, and one of which was how people can be bound by their memories or time.
This is something I would like to do an experiment with- likely more toward week 3/4 as I want to research memory and repetitive and/or cathartic practices further.
My initial thought is to have pre-stitched patterns, that a viewer may only get a minute or two to look at before having to replicate the design themselves. I could record their errors, and how long it takes them to execute the task. I could photograph their physical positioning and ask them how they feel during and after the process.
I’d like to discuss this idea in a tutorial.
Also, I need to remember to research diseases that effect the memory (Alzheimers, Amnesia, Dementia)
Citations:
Evy Jockhova. <https://evyjokhova.co.uk/about> [accessed 17 November 2019].
Samantha's RCA Process 