Things have been quiet on the blog front as I have been busy getting work ready for Contemporary Souvenir a solo exhibition at Sirius Arts Centre in Cobh Co Cork. Ireland. I was lucky to do two residencies there and now the resulting work will be on exhibit 14th October - 13th November.
Amongst the works is a Sailors hat with a map embroidered on the top and a bowler hat to celebrate the visit of Laurel and Hardy to the town and the playing of their theme tune on Cobh cathedral carillon. A knitted football celebrates Anne Geary a local woman part of a knitting co-operative who traveled following the world cup in her later years .
A series of deck chairs have been made in collaboration with Anne Kiely ( printed textile artist living in Cork). These are created with imagery and stories of Cobh and the visitor is encouraged to sit upon them and look out to sea .
"Cramming as many shows into the shortest possible time has long been an Edinburgh International Festival tradition. It is fitting, then, that an artist in residence at the festival this year condensed her project into just 24 hours.
Deirdre Nelson, who works with textiles and new media, spent a day and night at the Dovecot Studios, sleeping in the main hall of the gallery which was once a Victorian swimming pool.
She blogged and tweeted about the experience, taking pictures and lifting snippets from the internet as she heard the sounds of the city outside. At 10.30pm there were the fireworks from the Tattoo; at 3am there was the sound of the bottle bins; at 5am there was the squawk of the seagulls and the drunken song of a group of lads heading home from nightclubs.
Nelson’s work is also on show as part of the gallery’s Heirlooms exhibition throughout the festival. She had spent time in India with traditional weavers who taught her the art of kantha — quilt embroidery from rags, usually old saris. The pieces were used traditionally either as bed covers or to wrap everyday objects. Nelson used what she had learnt to make covers for modern objects — iPads, iPhones, USB sticks. Each carries a code that can be scanned on a smartphone to connect to an online exhibit linked to the physical one — for example, a video of the images that she has embroidered.
“What I wanted to do was to not make something specifically Indian,” she said of her display, which is called Repository of Memory.
“I think people sometimes come back and make very Indian-looking work. I wanted to make something contemporary rather than ethnic.”
Nelson, who is originally from Ireland but is now based in Glasgow, used old jeans and a T-shirt — the latter was bought on the British high street but made in Bangladesh.
The graduate from the Glasgow School of Art said: “I tweet a lot and do a lot of social networking as well as traditional embroidery and textiles. Roanne Dods [the deputy director of Dovecot] invited me to do a residency and we thought about a blogging, tweeting residency.”
Both women spent the night in the gallery surrounded by looms, threads and installations.
On the Kanthasleepover blog Nelson has posted the boyhood recollections of a regular at the pool. “On the Friday night my Ma would send us to infirmary Street baths for a plunge (bath) as we had no inside baths or toilets in Arthur Street. I think it cost 3 pence in old money.
“You’d get a towel and a bar of carbolic soap. It stank. The man running the plunges was miserable. He’d shout, ‘Come on, your time is up, you’ve been in there for hours’.”
The artist hopes the blog, and her experiences creating it, can become the basis for more extensive work.
“I was only there for one night but I’ve had so many ideas,” she said.
“I’m very interested in social history so I think there could be lots I could work with.”
by Lindsay McIntosh
repository of memory: passport cover
Each piece in Repository of Memory in Heirlooms exhibition has a QR code which when scans relates to relevent posts on http://durjani.tumblr.com/. An i-phone cover is embroidered with imagery relating to date palm sugar popular in West bengal and code links to a recipe for Date Chutney
its been a busy year and in February i had the opportunity to travel to Kolkata in connecton with Heirlooms exhibition at Dovecot Studios and Edinburgh International festival . It was an amazing experience and i had the opportunity to visit crafts centres with the crafts council of west bengal. As as result of this i am now making a body of work to be exhibited at dovecot studios 4th August - 4th September as part of Heirlooms.
With an interest in the traditional technique of Kantha stitch, a series of functional Kanthas have been made which reference the wrapping and protecting of everyday objects. Imagery has been gathered from a recent research trip to West Bengal through photographs and video stills. The imagery has been combined with drawings in collaboration with St John Vianny School in Edinburgh (through a series of workshops with Edinburgh International Festival.) In a collection of functional stitched textiles, ‘Repository of memory’ fuses the traditional skills of Kantha with contemporary reference to rapidly growing Information Technology in India. Each piece is accompnaied with QR code which can be scanned by mobile phone to link to online content.
barántúil (adj) = authentic
Barántúil is a collection of textiles by Deirdre Nelson. These have been created for Modern Languages exhibition curated by Katy West for the National Craft Gallery. A series of 'authentic' products have been made which play with ideas generated from research into Irish Textiles such as aran knit and lace.
Barántúil is a collection of textiles by Deirdre Nelson. These have been created for Modern Languages exhibition curated by Katy West for the National Craft Gallery. A series of 'authentic' products have been made which play with ideas generated from research into Irish Textiles such as aran knit and lace.
I have just completed work for Modern Languages an exhibition curated by Katy West with National Craft Gallery in Ireland.
Curated by Katy West, Modern Languages (re-interpreting the Irish vernacular) presents the work of Nao Matsunaga, Laura Mays, Deirdre Nelson, Ciara Phillips & Barbara Ridland. Coming from Ireland, Scotland, Canada and Japan, these artists offer new interpretations of traditional Irish craft.
The exhibition explores the relationships between indigenous Irish craft and contemporary international creative practice. It focuses on the intentional adoption and corruption of craft practices within the artist’s work; each adapts elements of the Irish vernacular to convey meanings that are no longer dictated by historic provenance but by their own personal interests and motives.
Modern Languages will be at the National Craft Gallery, Kilkenny from the 22nd of October - 11th of January 2012
The Ebay auction is doing well with Serendipity in the lead and red , bubble and fanny following closeby .
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