The Shawl
In 2016 I knitted a lace weight shawl in Soay sheep’s wool. The pattern was far too complicated for my level of expertise.
I undertook this as an exercise, rather than to make a wearable garment.
I intended to destroy the shawl after knitting it.
The shawl, in Soay sheep’s wool (a semi-wild, St. Kildan breed), took many months to knit and I unravelled and re-knitted it constantly. I was also drawing discarded feathers as a daily exercise during these months.
Meanwhile, in preparation for an attempt to reach the islands of St. Kilda, I was researching the lives of those people who elected to evacuate the home island, Hirta, in August 1930. I wondered how those people fared after they left such a close-knit, isolated community and such a unique culture. This then led me to consider how all our lives depend on the circle of people connected to us, through our work, our neighbourhood, our families and our friends. I decided to take a photograph of many examples of my own female web of connections, women, girls, babies wearing the knitted shawl. I took photos of 130 people and placed them in a frame designed for the reception area of an office.
“The Company of Women” on my studio wall at OVADA 2018.
Each person involved in this piece of work wore the shawl in their own way. Some stood still, some danced, some folded it and others inspected it. I photographed people of all generations, the oldest in their nineties and the youngest just weeks old.
This work was called “The Company of Women” and it was shown at my solo show “LaceWeight” at The North Wall Gallery, Oxford at the beginning of 2019.
Finally the shawl was used to make an embossed print. This was “Ghost”, a trace of the shawl’s shape with a dusting of charcoal to reveal the pattern. The glass was reflective and the viewer was able to see the ghost of the shawl and his or her own reflection. This was a homage to Gerhardt Richter’s “Grey Mirror” and my own comment on the brevity of life and the deep human need for companionship.
The shawl was felted and made into a nest for 130 feathers, those that I had drawn for a series of 130 framed drawings called “The Company of Others” .