Preparations for new work

Over the last couple of days I was sort of an industrialised woodworm: drilling 10000 holes into two boards. As Stefan quickly calculated all these holes amount to a length of about 100 metres. No wonder I had to change the drill bit from time to time.

Wordscape

Wordscape

Working towards The Hepworth Wakefield
Wakefield Art Gallery commissions: Wordscape

WORDSCAPE was on display at Wakefield Art Gallery from November 2007 until March 2009 when the gallery closed due to its imminent move to The Hepworth Wakefield:

"After nearly 75 years at its current location, Wakefield Art Gallery will close to the public on Sunday 29th March 2009.

The building on Wentworth Terrace is to be replaced by The Hepworth Wakefield, a new purpose - built Gallery on the historic Wakefield Waterfront designed by the award-winning architect David Chipperfield."

This project was supported by the Arts Council England.

Proposal

Proposal for site-specific work in a Gallery in Sheffield (December 2008): Two pieces related to light. Their proportions will respond to the dimensions and character of the bright ground floor Main-gallery space. The titles are working titles.


Split: grey and white Viscose gimp threads form a sort of wall. Sections of the threads are cut away and replaced by invisible thread splitting the "wall" into two pieces.



Floating Red is made of suspended brilliant red Mohair threads which form a floating brick shaped body.


The big window of the main gallery faces (south-)west and is almost square: 2m x 2m. This is the warm and sunny side (if there is a sun shining...). Another smaller window towards the sculpture garden faces (north-)east - the shadier side - and is about 0.75m x 1.9m.

Close-up screen

It's done.
In a strange way the polyester thread and the fringes at the right edge remind me of the water- foam and the threaded polystyrene I observed at the start of the On Spurn residency a year ago (see post of 7 April '08).

Threaded screen / part three

Nearly there - learning by doing.

Threaded screen / first part

Ready to go. The challenge is to keep the density and tension of the threads evenly. Also, the material is extremly slippery and difficult to knot.

Warp for close-up screen

The screen will be made of a shiny white polyester embroidery thread, 60 tpi (threads per inch).

It's happened again: the miracle that hundreds of fine threads (1300), one after the other, found their place on the loom, the tool to organize this all. Sometime while handling the warp it all looks very muddled...but then it worked again.