This installation and performance was presented and performed as a special project of Bianca Baldi & Kirsty Cockerill's curated exhibition Studio Visit/ Conversation at the AVA-Gallery in Cape Town, 25 May to 12 June 2009.

STATEMENT

My interest in lace is a logical progression of my general interest in thread-craft techniques: from creating needlepoint tapestries,to knitted and crocheted sculptural panels, I realised that my progression and moves between different thread-craft traditions involved a gradual reduction of threads and their thickness: from working with multiple stranded thread to single threads on a single thread woven fabric, from working with thread on a ground, to creating the ground as a means in itself (knitting/crochet). Bobbin lace is the logical next step for me, since the tradition allows the most amount of freedom of creating fabric forms through weaving and twisting fine thread.

I become, however, through my appropriation of lace as an art-making technique, an imposter in a tradition which generally excluded men in the manufacturing process. Through my status as artist I become an outsider within the realm of the craft's current structures based around craft guilds of non-artist practitioners as well. While these are important considerations, and considerations that I am acutely aware of, the minutae of certain histories concerning the tradition are currently more important in my creative decisions: The personal nature and sentiment attached to inscribed antique bobbins is the motivation for my working with English style bobbins, for example. The late 16th and 17th c. lace industry in the south of Devon where boys were sent to lace schools to keep them busy until they were old enough to work in the fishing or acriculture industries, is another specific history that I am drawing from. These are all elements of the craft's history which appeal to my general attraction to history's oddities, especially when these histories involve the romantic, sentiment and feminised masculinity.