SKINTBayeux Tapestry News about the evolution of an installation in the making |
|
|
Like punk rock. Pure energy with a sense of anarchy will be the approach to the new frieze I'm making… A sort of calligraphy of the psyche, with veins of riotous energy that defies a contemporary world made up of hidden forces and feelings of powerlessness that current issues can provoke. An act of freedom, inventing my own rules and refusing to put things into words that cannot be contained in words. |
|
|
But let's backtrack a bit… My encounter with the Bayeux Tapestry a few months ago provoked shock and awe: the millions of stitches, the length, the humour, the colourful patterns, the incongruous beasts, the linen itself, not to mention its age of nearly 1,000 years! |
|
|
I spent five quiet hours sketching looking intensely, drinking in the power of this hand stitched phenomenon. It depicts the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and the defeat of King Harold at the hands of William the Conqueror 1). |
|
|
The purpose of my work is not to develop the historical elements and the raison d'être of this major historical object. Instead, I will attempt to explore the potential links, albeit tenuous, that this ancient embroidery has with my own work on SKINT. |
|
|
The starting point... A friend's frustration with the Revolting Pin-Ups series in the 2022 Dreaming Mutiny exhibition concerned the dynamics of the charcoal strokes stopped by the edge of the frame. He remarked that the rectangle was 'too safe'. |
|
|
view of the series Revolting Pin-Ups in the exhibition DREAMING MUTINY 2022 - photos: Marie-George STAVELOT |
|
|
This comment got me thinking and, as drawn marks enjoy hard surfaces, the idea of a wooden frieze was born and research into SKINT began. With this in mind, my application for a grant from the DRAC 2) enabled me to obtain over 100 panels of poplar plywood 3). I started working on separate paintings and last year I did a short performance with a line of panels on the floor. |
|
|
On Sunday 21st July at 4pm You are invited to view the making of a live work in charcoal marking presence, impulse and insurrection at the Atelier Angström |
|
|
wooden frieze under construction |
|
|
And the Bayeux Tapestry? We usually commemorate victories, celebrating successes and people who have achieved great things. The tapestry is a colossal 70-metre-long embroidered linear narrative depicting a victorious battle. But what is the narrative of poverty? Poverty seems cyclical, generational, repetitive and endless, with no way out; instead, the end is the beginning of drudgery and monotony rather than a linear story that results in victory. The rhythm of my frieze will be linked to that of the Bayeux Tapestry, which itself represents violence: soldiers decapitated, stabbed and speared to death. |
|
|
Bayeux Tapestry (details) |
|
|
Stabbing? “Hunger is a discipline, a spur to make working class people work” (Ken Loach) |
|
|
Decapitation? Society often attributes poverty to laziness rather than social injustice, but “poverty deprives people of security and comfort and siphons off their brain power, stealing mind away from the rest of life” (Matthew Desmond) |
|
|
Since the beginning of SKINT, my aim has been to examine the parts of society and human nature that are invisibilised by the discomfort they publically cause. |
|
|
The abstract lines in my work are a personal response to a feeling of injustice, anger, violence and powerlessness. They are drawn as a statement in favour of freedom, anarchy and making one's own rules; to get away from the limits imposed by the need to be admired or to win a victory. |
|
|
I am following the simple idea that less is more and that a lifetime's experience can be contained in a single line… detached from form, a result or “success”. |
|
|
See you soon I hope! Linet |
|
|
1) For more information on the Bayeux Tapestry try “You're Dead to Me” on the BBC iPlayer 2) Direction Régional des Affaires Culturelles Bourgogne Franche-Comté. 3) In memory of Reto Melchior and the patronage of skills offered by his company; I am grateful for his support in supplying and sawing the panels with such precision. |
|
|
Atelier Angstrom - 43ter Grande Rue - 89390 - Perrigny-sur-Armançon - 06 14 02 62 27 |
|
|
|
|
