Richard Grayson - By Our Own Hand
A project that operates between and across the areas of Craft and Fine Art practice
By Our Own Hand is a project that operates between and across the areas of Craft and Fine Art practice.
Focussing on the act of stitching embroidered text panels it seeks to research and develop a project that :
- Reveals and articulates different loadings and values culturally invested in the arenas of craft and manual labour, artisanal labour and the high value Fine Art Practice labour.
- Articulates the shifting positions of gendered labour.
- Reveals ways that the act of stitching has been invested with Ethical and Political ideas of emancipation and improvement.
- Explores models of transformation and emancipation in religious and political stitched texts.
- Develops workshop strategies to expand competencies in non art-trained practitioners.
- Innovate ways of articulating the 'exhibition publication' as an equal site for the generation of meaning in a visual arts project, rather than as a secondary commentary
There are three areas of research:
- The histories of the sampler and stitched letters in the pre-industrial and industrial West
- The stitched letter in the visual arts practices of the 60’s 70’s: those of Arte Povera and the works developed by Alighiero e Boetti working with Pashtun embroiders.
- The forms and languages of religious and secular expressions of emancipation and improvement
Using these nodes as points of departure, the project investigates and interrogates different understandings values and loadings invested in the act of stitching at different times and different technological contexts: from when it was a primary means of production, then after the introduction of the machine, and now the introduction of the intelligent and networked machine.
In each context the stitch has taken on a different symbolic and cultural loading, from economic activity, to moral imperative to exemplar of ideal relation and non-alienated human to a source of recreation.
Download project PDF: Richard Grayson - By Our Own Hand (1.2MB) Richard Grayson - By Our Own Hand (Images Part 1) (4.5MB) & Richard Grayson - By Our Own Hand (Images Part 2) (3.8MB)
