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floating groins/fastened groins, 2018
Details
Twelve 3-D sculptures, printed in BrassFill fillament and strung with nettle thread, larch wood base.
Installation dimensions variable.
Location: Swimming Pool
Photography: Keith Hunter
Video Documentary: click here (opens in new window)
Links
Artist's Newsletter article
Mount Stuart web site
Scotsman article
common groin, 2017
Details
Six 3-D sculptures, printed in BrassFill, weaving by Hezileki Perkamoyo, Blantyre, Malawi. Divided into three parts and partially unravelled. Mounted on perspex plinths.
Installation Dimensions variable.
Photography: Ruth Clark
DESCRIPTION
This group of works extends in divergent temporal directions through its methods and materials; from historical references to World War I in the use of nettle thread and forward into the future with the use of a 3-D printing material still in beta-testing.
These explorations of 21st Century processes and materials combined with those from the natural world, reference the adaptations and ingenuity inherent in times of great upheaval. During such times as the Industrial Revolution, World War I and in a potential post-internet future, prehistoric methods and materials form a crucial safety net. The knowledge relating to the use of these materials lies dormant yet embodied, until it may be needed in extremis.
From to The Power of Twelve, 2018; new works drawing on Mount Stuart’s history as a Naval hospital during World War One; to The Power of Twelve, The China Harvest, Wrong Right Hand, Moss Depository, Witness Boards II, Floating Groins/Fastened Groins, The Velocity of Drops.
DESCRIPTION
The exhibition Common Groin was commissioned by Timespan as part of a year-long programme focusing on making – looking at the tools, techniques, and materials of making past, present and future and the ways in which our contemporary material culture connects us to a wider world. The focus on cotton weaving reflects Borland’s own family background in the textile and lace-making industries, which thrived during the 20th century in her hometown of Darvel, Ayrshire.
From Timespan, Common Groin, Exhibition Guide.
research/process; floating groins/fastened groins
Using forms derived from mathematical models produced around the same time as Mount Stuart was built in the late nineteenth century, the sculptures trace out three different kinds of architectural arch forms in space.
Referencing the Science Museum’s online catalogue to produce 3-D models, the three different designs depicting intersecting arches also known as ‘groin vaults’ have been made by combining traditional and contemporary materials: 3-D printed in a prototype material containing powdered brass called Brassfill, then threaded with thread produced from cordage made from nettle fibre. The mathematical models commissioned by the Science Museum, London in 1872, in turn influenced the mid-20th Century sculpture of Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth.
During WWI on the home front in Germany, nettles were harvested to produce fibre as an alternative to cotton which quickly became unavailable due to the Allied Naval blockades. Burial shrouds made from nettle fabrics have also been found dating back to the Bronze Age, 2000 BCE.
research/process; Common Groin
Hezileki: I have just found you, what are you doing here?
Christine: I’m learning about traditional techniques for weaving cotton... I started to think about this when I saw a loom in the museum of Scotland, which was sent back from Malawi by the Scottish missionary, David Livingston in 1871 and shows a technique of weaving exactly like yours.
Common Groin presented new work by Christine Borland, developing conversations begun on a trip to Malawi early in 2017 to work with weaver in residence, Hezileki Perekamoyo, at the Museum of Malawi in Blantyre.
Research for the exhibition explored both colonial and present-day links between Scotland and Malawi, through a material focus on cotton production and its legacies. Combining traditional and contemporary materials, the artist’s use of thread references mathematical models commissioned by the Science Museum, London in 1872, which in turn influenced the mid-20th Century sculpture of Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. It is also from one of these models that the exhibition takes its multi-layered title; the common groin, a mathematical model depicting the intersection of two cylinders having a pair of common tangents.