This week so far: a great novel & an exhibition

Yes, this is my week so far. Coffee, cake and culture - perfect! I have done some knitting, but need more photos for a proper post, so that is on its way!

I have blogged about visiting our local art gallery, Smiths Row, before. It's a lovely, clean space and they get interesting, accessible exhibitions there. Oh, and it's free! At the moment, it's hosting two exhibitions: Caroline Wright, On Tides and Fathoms, and Elin Hoyland's The Brothers. Wright's piece is a film piece, looking at three Suffolk locations - a beach hut, a shepherd's hut and a beach lookout - and the landscape around them. On Tides and Fathoms seems to suggest the inevitability of time passing, but also to consider how these small, purposeful buildings are - or aren't - used and their role in the Suffolk landscape.

Hoyland's The Brothers is a fascinating series of black and white photographs of two elderly farming brothers in the Norwegian countryside. Lots of Scandi jumpers here, worn with utilitarian authenticity! The sparseness of the brothers' home against the mountainous countryside is beautifully recorded.

I was very excited to get Tessa Hadley's novel, Clever Girl, from the library. I've read all of her previous books and have always found them beautifully detailed in their depiction of everyday sadnesses, joys and incisions. This is a completely captivating novel. It tells the story of Stella, from her childhood with her mother (who tells her her father is dead), to her adult life as a parent, student, lover and wife in her fifties at the novel's close. The story is entirely in the first person, encouraging the reader to empathise with Stella, but also lending the dilemmas, choices and moments of indecision she experiences a vivid plausibility. If you've read any of Hadley's other works, you will be prepared for the startlingly precise scrutiny to which she subjects the world around her characters and this is part of the novel's charm: she conjures up the world of Stella's 60s childhood and adolescence lightly but convincingly. For example, Stella's observation of her boyfriend, Valentine's, family is succinct but deftly suggests his social class: "his mother had a ruined face and watery huge eyes, she wore pearls and Chinese jade earrings at the dining table in the evenings (unlike us, they actually ate in their dining room)." Hadley is willing to probe, through Stella's character, the joys and limitations experienced by parents; parental absences, whether permanent or temporary, recur. Stella's attitude to her children seems always ambivalent. She disappears in the night, then returns at will, to her son's stoical comment, "Mum's back."

A poem I've always enjoyed is Liz Lochhead's The Choosing. In it, she compares herself, carrying a pile of books from the library, to a married, perhaps pregnant school friend whose life has taken a domestic rather than an academic path. Hadley plays with the same ideas here when Stella proclaims: "Men or books? With relief, I chose books." Is that "clever"? The title, and the dreamy pencil-sketched cover portrait of a schoolgirl staring into the middle distance, make the reader wonder, at the end, what "cleverness" is.

You can hear Liz Lochhead read her poem here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00nq5l3

 

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One Normal Knitted Pencil Case and An Exhibition

My 7 year-old nephew has grown up being showered with knitting by many of his relatives... so when he was asked what kind of pencil case he wanted for the new term, he said, "Just a normal, knitted one."!! So it fell to me to produce the pencil case. As always, this was more difficult than it sounded, as it needed a zip (tricky, fiddly) and a lining (tricky, fiddly) but I am really pleased with the results:

 

It's made of very cheap, squeaky DK so the wool panel wasn't terribly enjoyable to knit. But it didn't take long to make - though fitting the zip and lining seemed to take a whole day! Perhaps I've misremembered that, but they certainly took a *very* long time - endless tacking, and retacking... I don't think I'm a natural seamstress. But now I don't really want to give it away .... Pattern to follow!

 

I went to see the Transformations exhibition at Smiths Row last week. Many of the exhibits make use of textiles, sewing and stitching; my eyes lit up as I saw some knitting across the room. This piece is by Freddie Robins:

 

I must say, I felt a bit more ambivalent when I saw the noose-style hanging of the piece and the stab-style knitting needles. You can see from this close-up that the bodysuit reads Craft Kills:

 

Why Craft Kills? A problematic slogan, in my opinion (though it's available on badges in the gift shop!). If Robins believes in the power of craft (as the blurb suggested), then it's a shame if she automatically conflates power with killing. However, I'm sure craft has its darker side, as anything one 'makes' or crafts could be dangerous or harmful - people don't just craft doilies and baby clothes - but I am nevertheless uncomfortable about this piece. Hm.

 

Still, I uncomplicatedly like this piece by Susan Collis:

 

 

This isn't a terribly good photo because it doesn't show the detail of the marks on the boiler suit - which are machine-embroidered onto the cloth. I really like this because it reminds the audience that 'mistakes', blotches, splashes, are part of making things. Also, in a way, perhaps that art leaves its mark on the artist? Perhaps I'd better take off my Art Critic Hat there! It's a thought-provoking and beautifully laid out exhibition in the lovely setting of Smiths Row - well worth a look.

 

Now, to write up the pencil case knitting pattern....

 

 

 

 

Smiths Row Exhibition: Block Party

This exhibition, in the clean and light gallery in Bury St Edmunds, claims to "[reveal] the contemporary applications and creative possibilities of pattern cutting." It's curated by Lucy Orta. As I'm not really a seamstress, I wasn't sure how much I'd enjoy this, but it was an intriguing exhibition nevertheless. Most of the exhibits were quite a long way removed from the traditional pattern cutting that I remember from my mum's Butterick makes of the 1980s - the gallery says they look "poetically" at the craft - but a couple of the exhibits really appealed to me: in one, a garment had been made from fabric cut from the old-style paper patterns that I remember, but the pieces had been put to new uses - eg, a pattern piece for a sleeve used around a neck, or a lapel piece used as a waistband. Possibly not a great way of making a wearable garment, but instead quite an interesting revelation (to me!) about how one conforms, in a way, when following a (paper or indeed a knitting) pattern - doing what it says, slavishly! So there was something quite amusing and provocative about 'perverting' the paper pattern, or 'rebelling' against the paper pattern in this way.

The second exhibit I particularly enjoyed was of a glove made from a super-modern version of chain-mail - lots of cream links forming a 3D garment. The caption suggested that ultra-modern technology would create the fabric around the physical form, thus eliminating waste. Initially, I thought this was great: no waste, better for the environment . . .   but then I thought of the great uses that waste fabric snippets can be put to. An obvious example: patchwork. I used to always love a little patchwork cushion that my grandmother had, made from tiny little misshapen scraps of fabrics from her favourite worn-out dresses. What would happen to little memory-box works like patchwork if we had the fabric moulded to us, stitch by stitch, rather than piece by piece?

These are descriptions of just two exhibits which stuck in my mind; I think I'll have to go again and look harder at more of them!



Smiths Row

I popped in here at lunchtime today, to see the exhibition and to browse in the shop. The gallery is lovely:  a huge, light and white space. It has a little comfy reading room (where we've been for Knitting In Public day in the past), but sadly no cafe. The shop has quirky, cute stuff - textile buttons with little dresses, cupcakes and cups on them, as well as lovely block-printed, unusual cards. I had been told that there were knitted things, too, though I couldn't see any.  I saw some fantastic oil paintings by Lucy Crick. She (apparently!) is heavily influenced by the Dutch still life painters so she chooses the same dark background and sombre array of objects - no people.  But the objects she chooses to paint are modern kitsch - fondant fancies, fairy cases with old-fashioned china tea cups and - best picture of all - a 70s ceramic tea caddy with one of those pale blue tea cups with ridges on, still beloved of WI tea parties and church functions. Somehow the painting was really beautiful: the poignancy of these dated objects in the quite familiar style of the still life. Sadly this painting was over £500; it was quite striking.

A satisfying picture to add:

This shows some of my knitted scarves on display in Cuckoo. It felt rather arrogant taking a picture of them, but I wanted to get one to publish on here! Am I the only person who does this?!