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My Story
Christine is a collaborator of Hart & Sine and lecturer in
Design History at Gray’s School of Art.
Taking part in the Maakin Lab in Shetland offered me the
opportunity to work with artists and designer-makers,
educators, researchers,
conceptualists and entrepreneurs from all areas of the UK,
from London to Lerwick. The Lab’s remit was to
address issues related to the Shetland knitwear ‘industry’ and
was intended, as a process, to re-evaluate and re-value
a seemingly
dwindling, hand-produced knitwear tradition, including both
lace and Fair Isle work. The Lab was carried out within
a somewhat
loose research framework, I assume, to allow greater scope
for experimentation whilst offering potential response
to the specificity
of the Shetland Islands dynamic, thus rendering it an inclusive
process. I frequently found this intellectually frustrating,
rather woolly at times; however I gained a real insight into
different ways of framing and approaching research. The Lab
offered the luxury of complete immersion in creative
practice within
a supportive and stimulating peer group. This singularity
lacked the post modern, fragmentary nature of much of
contemporary life
and allowed the participants’ thinking and making to
accelerate and proliferate.
I was able, with the luxury of
time outside of my role as a design historian, to address
issues surrounding gender
and
knitting
through the mode of making. As hand-knitting is predominantly
thought of as a female occupation, though not exclusively,
I proposed that making a ‘sculpture’ can process
and represent the essence of things that have been intuited
and then
intuitively expressed. I made a piece entitled ‘Pitch
2003’,
which offered lowly everyday or undervalued objects in a
new and sometimes humorous presentation. The work questioned
the
dichotomy between mass production and handmade processes – an
issue at the heart of the contemporary craft and machine-knitting
industry. The work alluded to a football pitch, something
which holds a particular gendered position in culture. I
wanted to
pose questions about the relationship between masculinity
and knitting practices, and to encourage masculine creativity
between
the ages of 12 and 65+. I also saw a facsimile of a Heinz
Baked Beans can, knitted in perfect colour-matched wool,
by a young
Shetland boy, with ‘orange’ knitted beans stuffed
inside it, in the homely dining room of Burristow House.
See Fig.1
Baked Beans can, 2001, designer - maker Peter Anderton
I
mused about how to make contemporary knitting practices
a more inclusive culture. All children, both girls and
boys
in The Shetland Islands, are taught to knit in primary
school (an initiative introduced into schools to encourage ‘traditional’ craft
in response to fears of oil industry development eroding ‘traditional
Shetland life) but the practice is frequently rejected
during the rites of passage into early manhood.
Prior
to my visit to Shetland I re-visited the knitting skills
taught to me by my mother and this resulted in
the knitted
piece ‘ubiquitous’, 2003 (see Fig. 2) an oblique
comment on my then lack of a sense of place and attendant
interest in global ubiquitous products such as polystyrene
cups.
‘Pitch, 2003’ (see Fig. 3) is
the largest piece of work I have made to date. SO WHAT! Why
is this significant? The
Lab gave participants the opportunity to experiment, to
take risks, think laterally and empowered participants to do
something
never achieved before. I was aware of a generosity in the
cross-pollination of ideas and processes. I think it was
highly significant that
the Lab took place in the Shetland Islands as the location
offers such a strong dynamic in its cultural production;
alas, analysis of this is outside the scope of my non-story.
The sculpture ‘Pitch 2003’ was
excitingly shipped from Lerwick to Aberdeen and exhibited in
The Creel Inn at
the Catterline International Arts Festival, in August 2003.
A gallery interpretation board (see Fig. 4) was provided, which
discussed using knitting as a way of making things that are
not garments; in this case, facsimiles of loo rolls and paper
cups (the ubiquitous detritus that is thrown onto football
pitches by the crowd). This involved a successful collaboration
with Mary T Designs (Brae, Shetland) and Earl Solomon, my collaborator
in Hart & Sine. Hazel Hughson (Indigenous Craft Development
Officer, Shetland) will be able to use these images as examples
of unusual things that can be produced with knitting, thereby
encouraging more boys, as well as girls to engage with creative
expressive knitting practice, rather than confine it to the
production of feminine knitted objects, for example, bags.
Fig. 4 Gallery Interpretation Board, The
Creel Inn, Catterline International Arts Festival, August 2003.
Title: Pitch, 2003
This sculpture addresses gendered
activities, such as knitting and football. It proposes
to stimulate debate about the gendering of cultural practices.
The pitch is disquietingly tilted, like a frame from
an aerial landscape film but also present are warm, nostalgic
references to 1970s Subbuteo table-top football games.
In this sculpture, truth-to-scale is rejected as in bar
football games with their giant players and small goals.
The facsimile loo roll (machine knitted) and polystyrene
cups (hand knitted) are disruptively tossed onto the
sacred format of the pitch.
This
work was inspired and produced in The Shetland Islands,
where all primary school children
have been formally taught to knit in school since the
arrival of the oil industry as a positive celebration
of ‘traditional’ Shetland life and culture.
Hart & Sine
would like to thank:
Gray’s
School of Art, Aberdeen.
Susan Benn, Performing Arts Labs Ltd., London.
Shetland College, Lerwick, the Shetland Islands.
Mary T Designs, Carsaig, Brae, the Shetland Islands. |
I conducted archival research in Lerwick
during summer 2003, with assistance the Shetland College,
the Shetland library
service, the Shetland archives and the Shetland
museum and two retail outlets. My archival research revealed
much about
the gender dynamics in Shetland knitwear. A fuller
discussion of gender and knitting practices in
historical
context
and the role of ‘designer’ in Shetland
Lace and Fair Isle production was offered in
the conference paper ‘An
Assessment of the Gender Dynamics in Fair Isle
(Shetland) Knitwear’,
Design History Society Conference, Norwich School
of Art and Design, 2003.
Christine Arnold ‘An
Assessment of the Gender Dynamics in Fair Isle
(Shetland) Knitwear’
Download conference
paper (Text and Images) PDF (1MB)
Download conference paper (Text only)
PDF (160K)
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