The last Clothes, Cloth & Culture Group meeting
focussed on the theme of ‘Cloth and Social Action’. Françoise Dupré spoke of her work during the 1980s in
collaboration with the Brixton Art Gallery, in particular the Patchwork of Our Lives banners created
with a group of Soweto women at the height of the anti-Apartheid campaigns in
1986. She also spoke about Women’s Work,
an arts organisation that she co-founded. She recalled the annual banners that they
made, drawing on earlier political banner making traditions, for example, those
worked by the Socialist Movement and by the Suffragettes. This stitching,
piecing and embroidering was of course happening around the time of Rozsika
Parker’s Subversive Stitch and the
subsequent show at the Cornerhouse and Whitworth Art Galleries. This was the
era during which the barriers between craft and art began to be torn down and
the domestic space was shown to be the political space that perhaps it always
was, particularly for working class women. Dupré went on to discuss her current work
concerned with cosmopolitanism, with the plasticity and the sociability of
textile crafts, with the use of textiles as a ‘portal’, and with the crafting
of space through collaborative participatory social practice, that binds the
haptic to the making of socially meaningful art objects. She reminded us of Stuart Hall’s notion of ‘home’ as process; a concept that rests on
ongoing engagement, i.e. something that needs to be ‘worked’.
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The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine
Rozsika Parker. Cover Image © I.B. Tauris
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These points were brought to life by Victoria Khur,
Ruth-Marie Tunkara, the QSA ‘Knees Up’ knitting and crochet club ladies and
Derek (currently the only male member of the club). Through a ‘vox-pop’ style
film, Khur and Tunkara relayed tales of newly formed relationships that cross
generational, economic, racial and cultural divides, stories of the sharing of
knowledge and expertise, and accounts of the empowerment of the residents that
attend the club. A project of Quaker Social Action, situated in London’s,
Bethnal Green, ‘Knees Up’ uniquely promotes a belief in the possible by focusing on
what is strong in communities, rather than what is wrong with communities.
The title of their presentation, ‘Weaving a Community Tapestry’, neatly sums up
the common ground between the two presentations and the content of the discussions
that followed. At a certain level, Dupré, Khur and Tunkara’s talks were
underlined by this notion of possibility, which is aligned to the idea of unity
through difference.
Earlier on that Thursday, I had visited PROGESS at the
Foundling Museum, Brunswick Square, London. Set out over three floors, the
exhibition marks the 250th anniversary of William Hogarth’s death by
showcasing the responses of four contemporary artists - Yinka Shonibare MBE,
Grayson Perry, David Hockney and Jessie Brennan – to his infamous series of
etchings A Rake’s Progress, (1735).
Grayson Perry’s the Vanity of Small
Differences occupies the basement.
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Grayson Perry, The
Vanity of Small Differences, The Adoration of the Cage Fighters,
2012. Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro Gallery, London © The artist
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Perry’s the Vanity of
Small Differences consists of six tapestries charting the progress of Tim Rakewell. These densely
woven and richly coloured tapestries provide Perry with a means through which
to explore issues around class and taste as the exhibition catalogue tells us.
But, in my view, these intricate hangings also speak about today’s rapidly
changing urban landscapes, or ‘social fabric’, to reference a previous Iniva
project. Rakewell’s progress tells the story of not only the demise of a man
but also the breakdown of communities that we all too often witness in this
contemporary moment. Today’s fast-paced social upheaval could be said to
parallel that of the 1980’s noted above: the unstable economic climate, the
gentrification of former working class areas coupled with a dearth of
affordable housing, the rise of far right political movements, the growing
fragmentation of society. Biblical references, compositional strategies reminiscent
of religious paintings and narrative structures based on Hogarth’s original Rake collide with recognisable symbols
of wealth and lack of wealth in Perry’s series: a cafetiére, an allotment, a young ‘baby
mother’, a smart phone, a copy of Hello
magazine. The viewer is taken through the various stages of Rakewell’s journey
from his working class roots to his rise to the upper classes. The last
tapestry #Lamentation depicts our
protagonist’s violent passing at the wheels of his Ferrari. His body, pulled
from the wreckage and surrounded by capitalist markers of success, lies
motionless at the centre of the scene. The whole is tweeted by onlookers positioned
in the background of the piece, hence the Twitter hashtag in the title. Might
this final act represent the ultimate rending of a community tapestry?
Grayson Perry, The
Vanity of Small Differences, The Annunciation of the Virgin Deal,
2012. Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro Gallery, London © The artist
Progress: William
Hogarth, Yinka Shonibare MBE, Grayson Perry, David Hockney, Jessie Brennan
The Foundling Museum
6th June –
7th September 2014
Christine Checinska
