Coram's coat

In Coram, next to the Foundling Museum, they have a reproduction of Thomas Coram's coat on display in their entrance hall.  Coram is the children's charity that developed from the eighteenth-century London Foundling Hospital.   The coat on display is based on the one in William Hogarth's famous portrait of Coram, which you can also see on display at the Museum.  The coat was made by Ninya Mikhaila of The Tudor Tailor; you might also know her from BBC's Stitch in Time programme. 

As well as the coat there is a reproduction of Coram's hat, and a short film giving an insight into how the coat was made. 

The coat also gives an insight into what Coram's coat looks like from the back - obviously something you cannot see in the painting.

If you are visiting the Foundling Museum on a week day, the Coram display is free to visit.  The coat may not be on show for much longer as the charity are developing a new display for the summer.

Lost and Found

It's a funny thing - at the beginning of this week I felt a bit lost.  All that intense thinking and writing and editing for my final dissertation - then it is handed in and all I have to do is wait.

Instead I can now focus on my EAST textile art work (above).  I can also prepare for the Being Human Festival 2017 running from 17 to 25 November 2017.  Organised by the School of Advanced Study, University of London I am part of just one of a hundreds of events relative to studies in the humanities.  Talks, workshops, guided walks, exhibitions are held all over the country and this year, internationally too.  The theme for this year is Lost and Found

So on Saturday 18 November you will find me involved in Finding Through Feeling, at the Foundling Museum, London.  There will be a handling session allowing visitors to engage with some replicas of foundling tokens and 18th century infant clothing.  Such activities are held regularly now at the museum - usually the last Saturday of the month.  It is always fascinating being part of the conversations that come out of these events.

Looking through the festival brochure I found some other events that seem to have some textile/craft/token related elements -

Also on Saturday 18 November at the British Museum, the London Metropolitan Archives are running a day of talks, weaving and object handling related to the Somali object display.

On Monday 20 November, Queen Mary University of London's Centre for the History of the Emotions are running an event at the Royal College of Nursing looking at the power of objects.  There will be puppetry workshops, emotional talismans and displays of healing objects.

On Thursday 23 November the University of the Arts London are hosting an event at the Museum of London looking at living in the city.  The event looks at how fashion connects people and place and includes a T-shirt design workshop as a way of recognising the importance of community within the city.

Also on Thursday 23 November the Royal College of Art are investigating bereavement and mental health issues through textiles.

Further afield in Newcastle Upon Tyne there is The Great Knitting Workshop: Picking up Dropped Stitches looking at the history of knitting - also on Thursday 23 November.  This is being run by Northumbria University at The Literary and Philosophical Society Library.

The whole festival runs between 17 and 25 November and although there are paper versions of the brochure it is also possible to view on line - beinghumanfestival.org for more information.  Some events have to be booked in advance and the website should have the links.

What I Found at The Foundling

Having found the Foundling Museum several years ago as a source of inspiration for my own textile work (as above*), and now a place of work, I am probably more than a bit biased when recommending their temporary exhibitions. However, their exhibition Found, curated by Cornelia Parker is, I think, one of their best.  

Over 60 artists have contributed with either found objects or work that relates to the subject of things found (and lost).  Many of the pieces on display are quite ordinary things, (some are literally rubbish), but each one has a remarkable story.  Several pieces are textiles or look like textiles, so as this is a textile themed blog I will highlight these first:

In the entrance hall is Yinke Shonibare's Trumpet Boy, beautifully dressed in bright African style fabrics and a found trumpet, almost heralding the visitors' arrival.  In the introductory gallery, Sue Pritchard has contributed fragments of her grandfather's old sailor suit alongside a photo and spade - telling a story of how they have become a symbol of love and hardship.  Laura Ford found items on her daily school run, which she used to create Glove Boy - who is now exploring the first floor landing (and I'm sure comes alive at night).  In the main exhibition area, Tacita Dean says she found an embroidery - although it is actually a woven fabric, (or perhaps this is a case of post-modern irony?)  Gavin Turk's Nomad looks like a fabric sleeping bag hiding its occupant, but is in fact made of bronze.

But there are also several other (non-textile) works that I feel I should mention - Anthony Gormley's Iron Baby, alone in an empty room has been picked out as the favourite of many visitors as is Dad's Stick a video work (and paint stick) by John Smith, which I found very moving. Ron Arad's 1951 is, like the paper note tokens, a collection of people's lives barely known.  Probably the tiniest exhibit is a piece of Hans Christian Anderson's blotting paper.

This is an exhibition to make you sad, to make you laugh, to make you think.  As was said on a recent review of the exhibition (BBC Radio 4's Saturday Review), it is also an exhibition to make you look and make you read - to make you explore.  It is worth taking time to read the labels; perhaps have a cup of coffee/tea halfway through.  It is not an exhibition you can appreciate with a quick view. Personally, I think this is one exhibition not to be missed.  

The Found exhibition continues until 4 September 2016.  The Foundling Museum is open Tuesday-Sundays and can be found at Brunswick Square, London, WC1N.  Full adult admission fee - £10.25 (check website for concessions) - children free.  

Lovely cafe too.

*my work displayed at The Crypt Gallery, St Pancras Church in 2013, and relating to research into the life of Margaret Larney, a story I found of a mother who left two children at the Foundling Hospital in the 1750s, whilst she was in Newgate Jail.  (Photo by Andrew Willis.)

This is not an orange.

It may look, taste, feel, smell like an orange - but it is in fact a piece of art, and previously on display at Tate Britain.  It is not often that galleries suggest you take a piece of art they have on display home, and when I visited I have to say I did not have the nerve to do so, but my friend did and gave the "art" to me. The exhibition is Conceptual Art in Britain 1964-1979.  For many people conceptual art is quite baffling but really it is about questioning what art is - a question famously asked by Marcel Duchamp when he tried to exhibit Fountain (which everyone thought was just a urinal) - a so called "found object".

So what has this to do with textiles?  Well it reminds me that despite all the decades of discussion, with many now agreeing that something is art if an artist says it is, there are still many who do not include embroidery and textile art as fine art.  Despite this there are plenty of textile pieces, even embroidered ones, in the major modern art galleries.

It did not help that in the 18th century the Royal Academy banned "fancy work" from their exhibitions - but even though there was at least one embroidered piece in last year's Summer Exhibition, most embroiderers are still nervous of submitting their work to this open show.  Now they must love textile art as the Royal Academy has wrapped their building in a fabric installation by artist Yinke Shonibare - a work titled Family Album.  (It is called a tapestry but I think it is more likely to be a printed art work, but I have yet to see it in real life).

Tomorrow sees the opening of a brand new exhibition at the Foundling Museum - called Found. Curated by Cornelia Parker, the list of other participating artists is impressive and I am looking forward to seeing what they have found - and also hearing about the stories behind their work.  I am particularly interested to find out if there are any textiles - watch this space.

Found - opens at the Foundling Museum in London, on Friday 27 May 2016 and continues until 4 September 2016.

Conceptual Art in Britain 1964-1979 continues at Tate Britain in London until 29 August 2016.

The Royal Academy Summer Show opens 13 June and continues until 21 August 2016.

Finding Faults of Love

Today I visited the Foundling Museum and while I was there I had a further look at The Fallen Woman exhibition.  I first saw this fascinating exhibition in September and now it is in its last few weeks.  The exhibition looks at the lives of real women of the Victorian era who turned to the Foundling Hospital in their hour of need.  Real petitions are displayed alongside paintings, prints and stereoscopic photographs to look at how women of the time were portrayed in art.  Additionally there is a sound installation. 

The stories from the petitions show girls who were naive, gullible or in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Whatever the story it seems it was always the women who were at fault and for some the hospital allowed them their only hope of a second chance in life.  

The art works show how in Victorian England there was often only three types of women - the totally virtuous, the tempted woman (was she weak or strong?) and the fallen woman.  In art the only way the fallen woman could redeem herself was in death.  The dress you wore was frequently an indicator of which of these types of woman you were thought to be.  

Alongside this thought provoking exhibition was another smaller display - Unpinned. This included work by First Year BA Jewellery Design students from Central Saint Martins, who had used the museum and its archives as a as their inspiration.  I particularly liked the image at the top of this page.  Made from cotton and pins it was a really fascinating technique.  There were other textile pieces on display, some of which are shown below.  

The Fallen Woman continues until 3 January 2016

Unpinned is on display until 31 January 2016

The museum is normally open every day except Monday but is closed between Christmas Day and New Year.

Missing the small things

Have you ever been to an exhibition where you thought you had seen everything only to find, on talking to someone else, you missed something interesting? If only there was enough time (or funds) to visit exhibitions several times over. 

Over the summer I have been volunteering at the Foundling Museum in London on a regular basis and one of my jobs was stewarding in the galleries. Answering visitors' questions is one way of seeing objects from another person's viewpoint. Stewarding also means seeing the displays and exhibitions repeatedly over several weeks.  Temporary exhibitions are another way of "revisiting" objects you thought you knew.

One of the current exhibitions at the Foundling Museum is 26 Pairs of Eyes.  Twenty six writers were invited to look at twenty six objects and create a response using 62 words (a sestude).  The items they wrote about were not chosen by the individuals themselves, but "pulled out of a hat".  The writers had no control over what they had to write about.  

One of the items chosen was a textile one - a foundling boy's uniform.

It is part of the permanent display, that also includes one of the girl's outfits - both uniforms hardly changed from designs (allegedly by William Hogarth) of the 18th century and continued to be used in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The sestudes are spread throughout the museum, and printed on yellow card making them relatively easy to find - though there is an element of a "treasure hunt" in finding them all.  When you find one you have to stop and look at the object, looking to see what the writer saw.  What did the writer notice that I had missed? 

There are plenty of questions that might come to mind when looking at the uniforms.  Who might have worn them?   Who made them?  Who decided when you needed a new one?  Were they warm in winter; too hot in summer?  Were they scratchy or soft?  How did the children feel all dressed the same?

The sestudes allow you an insight into what the writers noticed and the 26 Pairs of Eyes blog gives an extra back story to their thinking.  Maeve O'Sullivan, who was picked to write about the boy's uniform, was initially fascinated by the buttons of the boy's uniform.  This led her on a thread of thinking to other ideas about childhood and identity both in the past and present.  She thought about the hospital and how it gave the children who came there a better chance than those who coped with poverty.  She thought about how the children themselves thought of their lives and how we live ours. 

Just one object led to all these thoughts.

26 Pairs of Eyes continues at the Foundling Museum until 25 October 2015.

Weaving a narrative - a portrait of every-woman (or man)?

When I knew I was visiting the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy in London last weekend, there was one work I knew I wanted to see - Grayson's Perry's Julie and Rob tapestry.  Last summer I was lucky enough to spend quite a bit of time at the Foundling Museum when the exhibition Progress was on, which included Perry's The Vanity of Small Differences (2012).  That set of tapestries followed the progress of Tim Rakewell, in a parody of William Hogarth's Tom Rakewell (Rakes Progress) - both "rag to riches" stories, that end with the protagonist having a rather untimely death. They were both portraits of a fictional life with a moral tale and both contemporary of their time.

At the time of Progress, I had spent the previous year studying Exploring Art and Visual Culture (A226) with the Open University.  It was the perfect timing to understand the art history references and symbolism that Perry includes in his contemporary narratives.  What I particularly noticed about Perry's work is that although you can enjoy it on a simple level with its bold images and contemporary references, there are always symbols and layers of meaning to discover - some humorous, some thought provoking.  

This Summer Exhibition piece is part of a body of work that tells the story of the fictional Julie Cope. Part "shrine", part holiday home, Perry had been commissioned to design a house, now built in Wrabness in Essex, and this is perhaps the most well known part of his homage to the "every-women" in Essex.   Despite being a native of Essex myself, "Julie" is not a character I fully identify with, but perhaps that is the point - there is no typical "Essex woman" (or man).  Anyway can a portrait ever tell the whole story of someone?

Julie's identity bracelet did resonate as I had a similar bracelet when I was in my teens/twenties - did my charms say something about me then?  I also wondered about the flowers - did they symbolise some personal aspect of Julie or her life?  What about the tear welling up in Rob's eye - what did that imply? The fictional Julie died, (as symbolised by the pizza delivery bike that is part of the display in the Wrabness house), but unless this Rob had some foreknowledge of her demise surely this image was supposed to be a portrayal of a couple in happier days.  Is he raising his glass or drowning his sorrows?  

Julie and Rob also reminded me of another of Perry's exhibitions which had as its main theme identity through portraiture (personal, regional, national) - the Who Are You? exhibition, which I visited in February this year at the National Portrait Gallery, London.  Not only did it examine a whole range of British identities (mainly in the medium of textiles or ceramics) but the work also questioned how we view different individuals and groups - by their appearance, by their gender, by their disability, by their religion, their lifestyle or home town. Can anyone really be identified by these things and does our identity change in different circumstances depending on who we are with and where we are at the time?  

I have found all these explorations of identity fascinating and Perry's work always challenges my thinking - opening my eyes to lives I might not have thought about before.  I think one of Perry's greatest skills is how he communicates his ideas - using contemporary themes and media we are all familiar with (ceramics and textiles, and often an accompanying TV show), his work is certainly accessible to every-woman and every-man.  And perhaps that it why his work appeals to so many - you certainly do not need to understand art history to enjoy his work, but it does give another layer of meaning.

Growing Colour

Over the last year or so I have become a regular visitor to Cressing Temple Gardens, in Essex (UK) in particular their Walled Garden.  Created to represent a garden from the Tudor era, it includes knots, a medicinal section, a nosegay garden, a potager and a flowery mead.  One of my favourite sections is the dye garden.  

This is the woad plant (isatis tinctoria) as it is currently (June 2015), in the garden at Cressing.  It has a history as a dye plant that goes back to neolithic times, and until the discovery and importation of indigo (indigofera tinctoria) from Asia was the only way of dyeing cloth blue in England for thousands of years.  For many centuries it was also needed for dyeing green - cloth was first dyed blue and then over-dyed with yellow.  It is one of the reasons that early textiles such as tapestries, change so much with age - the yellow dye is not so fast and as it fades, anything that was once green reverts to blue.

By the 16th century, most blue cloth was dyed with imported indigo.  Woad, although still home grown, was used mainly for the fermenting process needed to create a usable dye (see John Edmonds book The History of Woad and the Medieval Woad Vat.)

One of my special interests is the tokens of the 18th century foundling hospital - notes and objects left with infants brought to the hospital, many of which were fabric.  A large number of the pieces of fabric were taken from the children's clothing and many cottons and linens are blue and white stripes and checks.  These simple, rather plain snippets of fabric are not at first sight, the most interesting of the fabrics, but when you realise how many people and hours of work were needed for the creation of every piece of cloth it is a reminder that their use as tokens is only one small part of their story. Not only for the process of dyeing, but time and manpower was also needed for spinning and weaving, which until industrialisation would have been done on home based looms.  Then there was the peril of the sailors who brought indigo from Asia to dye the threads blue, and of course there is the manufacture of the cotton which depended on the despicable slave trade.

So when I looked at this unassuming plant all this came to my mind, and it was just one plant in a whole garden on historical (sometimes textile related) stories.  The garden has a whole host of other dye plants and the garden is free to visit all year around.  The Foundling Museum in Brunswick Square, London is the place to visit to find out more about the tokens.