20 Feb 2025

I have an overall feeling of floundering. I am not sure where to push myself currently because I cannot see a direction forward, even with many ideas and half-concepts of things that could become an art piece I have no specific direction.

Treating fabric with latex has so far lead no where but today was only the first time I have ever worked with that material. Adding the latex to the textile takes away any of its character, it no longer drapes as it did because of the added structure of the latex. I need to find a way to create a latex/textile material that preserves the character of the fabric, I think. I have also thought about treating the fabric with wax, After my experiments with stiffening with PVA glue, and the subsequent realisation that it deteriorates very quickly and doesn’t hold the shape that I want it to, I want to find an alternative that will hold the fabric but still allow it to maintain a character of it’s materiality.

I think treating the fabric with wax could be an interesting experiment as I it stiffens the fabric quickly yet is a liquid when applied so will allow it drape and move as it is hardening. Practical concerns would be where to store the fabric sheets as they are being treated, especially if I am going to scale up my production for a larger installation at Copeland Gallery. And also transportation as the was will crack and break on the journey. It could be done on site at Copeland, but I am getting ahead of myself. I don’t even know if the wax route is the one I want to go down.

I don’t think I am done with the latex either but more experimentation is needed to have a better idea of what exactly I want from it.

In terms of the installation itself I have been going back and forth on what I want it to be. My original idea was to have a central piece that is obscured by a ‘forest’ of textile sheets that the view/experiencer would have to walk through to see fully. Now I think I am more interested in the general idea of building an environment that a person can experience holistically. Something that they can be immersed in.

This both push me forward and sets me back. With the central piece, I wanted to build tension by treating the sheets of fabric turning them into something more visceral, e.g. Mire Lee I am a fountain of filth raving mad with love. But without a central anchor, not that I ever worked out what that central point would actually be, there is no building of tension.

I do like the idea that there is not a point in which everything comes to light, things are explained and suddenly make sense. The overall feeling of being lost in a wood is something that is visceral in itself. A very childish experience, something out of a fairy tale, Red Riding Hood lost in the wood. Along with this I can create moment within the ‘forest’, looking at lantern and perhaps other objects placed with in the environment that a viewer/experiencer could stumble across as they traverse it.

While talking with Katrina Cowling from the RA she referred to it as a labyrinth and I think this has distracted me. A labyrinth has a middle and a way out and a set direction. It was never a labyrinth but I think her referring to it as such push me in the direction that I may be, and I want to reject that idea. The viewer/experiencer should be asked to travers the work as they want to , and there should be many ways through, as one finds their own way between the trees until they are out of the wood.

Coming back to the idea of treating the fabric though, I feel as though the sheets of fabric that make up the installation should be altered in some way. I am not sure how or even why really, but it seems important to me that they not just be left as raw textile. I need to work out exactly how it is that I treat them though. With latex and sheet of textile could be ripped apart and then stuck back together within a latex sheet, a hole patched up with a second material. This way the majority of the fabric could be left untreated, thus maintaining its character (drape, colour etc) but would still be altered in someway.

The whole reason I wanted to add latex to textile was to more directly reference the body in my work. To me a visceral work is a work that is felt in the body, not the mind; looking at it tenses your muscles, it disgusts you and repulses you, giving you the choice to look away or stare. I think that latex is often used as synecdoche for skins or meat or other more literal bodily allusions but for me latex has the ability to more directly speak to the body, not through metaphor but though abjection (a word I learned just today). That is what I want from a textile treated with latex, however I am not sure I am going to go about that. A materiality that disgusts.

Perhaps this is a separate idea, something that can be put to the side for now. The forest is generally felt as more austere, something old and grand. This I can achieve through scale. Maybe it is time to revisit dipping fabric in plaster. there are many way in which I can approach this and I am not sure which direction to take, I am feeling paralysed and I am also worried about scale and practical concerns of getting it to the site unharmed. I could also revisit the experiment that had in first year of dipping textile in slip clay and firing it, then being left with a ceramic piece with the character textile. I can use other fabrics perhaps, though that comes with the restriction, both financially and materially, of only using natural fibres.