Untitled (Shame Hangings)
2018
Vintage cotton curtain linings; steel pole; fixtures
This work is interested in the seemingly contradictory — but actually complementary — impulses of concealment and revelation; in this, I am indebted to this comment by the the poet and essayist Denise Riley: ‘there’s a proximity of shame to exhibitionism. An “exhibited” kind of writerly shame can be a concealment tangled with unconcealment. You do need a confident immodesty to display your own shame. Yet that real confidence could be covering over an equally real humiliation. Some bold authorial show of shame needn’t cancel out the emotion itself.’
These works are made from the linings of vintage curtains, which are then draped over a steel pole which is held away from the wall. The linings usually perform a curious role in that while they are made of cheap, plain cotton, it is they that are turned to face the public; the richer material remains private. In encouraging us to pay greater attention to their presence, we become aware of the presence of much else: the markings of time and of human presence, imprinted, and now inherited.
2018
Vintage cotton curtain linings; steel pole; fixtures
This work is interested in the seemingly contradictory — but actually complementary — impulses of concealment and revelation; in this, I am indebted to this comment by the the poet and essayist Denise Riley: ‘there’s a proximity of shame to exhibitionism. An “exhibited” kind of writerly shame can be a concealment tangled with unconcealment. You do need a confident immodesty to display your own shame. Yet that real confidence could be covering over an equally real humiliation. Some bold authorial show of shame needn’t cancel out the emotion itself.’
These works are made from the linings of vintage curtains, which are then draped over a steel pole which is held away from the wall. The linings usually perform a curious role in that while they are made of cheap, plain cotton, it is they that are turned to face the public; the richer material remains private. In encouraging us to pay greater attention to their presence, we become aware of the presence of much else: the markings of time and of human presence, imprinted, and now inherited.
