Meet the boys

October 2013: a young woman leans over a medical technician and takes a photograph of a computer monitor with her mobile phone. On the screen are images of the two bundles of cells that the technician is about to implant in her womb. The woman was my partner’s sister, Lynsey Mogg, and the cells go on to grow into her two sons, Rufus and Rafe.

I think this image is one of the most remarkable photos I have ever seen in my life.  

 It’s the starting point for the Paths to Utopia project that will be at Somerset House this summer.  The plan is that  the image will be printed onto fabric and then embroider speakers into it to make a ‘singing quilt’.  The quilt will then play a sound file of the boys when you are in front of the piece.

Oh yes, and this is how they looked when they had a very exciting afternoon out at the park near our house.

This project is made possible with the support of The Cultural Institute at King’s College London, premiering as part of Utopia 2016.

will hum about mine ears

I have been working on a commission for the Royal Shakespeare Company.  As part of the events to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death the RSC have asked artists to make work in response to cast and creative’s favourite quotes.  I have been working with composer Isobel Waller-Bridge’s choice of Caliban’s speech from ‘The Tempest’.  I focussed on two elements of the speech; firstly the part where Caliban likens noises on the island to ‘a thousand twangling instruments’ and secondly the part where Caliban speaks of dreaming and clouds.
The work will be on show 19 March - 18 September 2016, PACCAR Room, Level 2, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford upon Avon
https://www.rsc.org.uk/exhibitions/well-said
http://www.isobelwaller-bridge.com/

On damage and repair

Karina Thompson's '60 Beats a Minute' (left) and Dorothy Caldwell's 'Comfort of Fog'
Photo credit: Liz Cooper

'What have I got to do to make it okay' has opened at the Crafts Study centre at UCA in Farnham.  I have yet to see the show at that venue but a couple of people who have said that it looks great it the space.  Liz Cooper sent me this photo she took of my piece ‘60 beats a minute’ alongside Dorothy Caldwell’s ‘Comfort of fog’. 

http://www.csc.ucreative.ac.uk/

As part of the exhibitions there is a symposium on the 2^nd March picking up on some of the themes within the exhibition.  I cant wait!

You can find out more details here

http://crest.ac.uk/events/uca-conference-symposium-on-damage-repair/

Embroidered Speakers Part 1

We have begun developing the embroidered speakers for the Paths to Utopia project.  I am working with Dr Matthew Howard from the Centre for Robotics Research, KCL and one of his students Bowen Han.  The samples in the picture are a variety of stitched wires and conductive threads.   Unusually for me these first samples were all free motion embroidered by hand with a mixture of couching and cabling.  The first test was to see if we could get signal to go through the circuits and we managed it on all the samples.  Of course some samples were better than others but we could get an audible but quiet ‘buzz’.  That was because we weren’t amplifying the signal but we will look to try and do that later in the process.

The next stage was to actually digitally embroider the speakers for two reasons.  We can accurately measure the length of the thread so we can then accurately work out the electronics and secondly because they do look lovely when they are done that was.

This project is made possible with the support of The Cultural Institute at King’s College London, premiering as part of Utopia 2016. 

Game On

I am very excited to have a project selected as part of Utopia, a festival marking the 500^th anniversary of Thomas More’s famous book.   The festival will be hosted at Somerset House, the Courtauld Institute of Art and the Cultural Institute at Kings College London in 2016.  We are hope to be installing work in the Inigo Rooms at Somerset House during the summer.  
http://utopia.somersethouse.org.uk/

I will be once again collaborating with Dr Matthew Howard and the Centre for Robotic Research at Kings College London.  We plan to combine e-textiles with digitally printed and stitched textiles to make art quilts that respond to the audience’s presence.  Those of you who know me well will know that I am passionately interested in bio medical data and this will be a theme within the work.  We will look at the positive effect IVF has had on peoples’ lives.

Just as with the Cloth and Memory 2 exhibition and the Crafts Council Parallel Practice residency I will be blogging about the progress of the project and I hope you will enjoy following the story.

'What have I got to do to make it okay' curators tour

The exhibition at The Pumphouse Gallery 'What have I got to do to make it okay' ends at the end of the month.
If you arent able to visit then you might find Liz Cooper's tour of the show on the Studio International website interesting.  Liz talks in depth about all the work in the show.

http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/liz-cooper-video-interview-what-do-i-need-to-do-to-make-it-ok



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