Lab Stories
Christine Arnold
 


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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