Knitting performances

An ongoing series of projects that use knitting as a performative process to explore time, space and memory in body and in material.

Since 2006, I have been working with knitting in durational performance, exploring the experience of time – as duration, texture and space – and the gradual accretion of memory in material and body.

As well as individual performances, this work has been shown in group exhibitions at the Rubin Center for the Arts, El Paso, Texas and the Bhavan Center, London, and was the subject of a solo exhibition at R-Space at the Linen Rooms, Lisburn, Northern Ireland in 2012.

Knitting a Rothko

Cumulative durational performance and textile. At each performance, for 4 hours or more I sit knitting to add to a vast panel resembling a painting by Mark Rothko. After each performance the panel is hung in the space, its unfinished edge trailing yarn and suggesting its continuation down the wall.

 

Hour (for Penelope)

Time passing, time returning, suspended time. Through a continual process of knitting and unravelling, this 424-hour durational performance examines the experience of time as line and cycle, as moment and infinity, as chronology and memory. The yarn is knitted, unravelled and reknitted over and over, in a vain attempt to hold back inexorable time, and the gradual wear of material and body.

 

Click here for video of 24-hour performance

A Year of Waiting

For a year, I knitted each time I waited for public transport, noting the date, location and destination. The finished piece (over 4.5 metres long) is hung to reveal the accumulated waiting time of a year.

 

 

 
Ravel

Durational performance. I lay a line of yarn through the streets, and then retrace my steps (over 1-5 km), knitting up the yarn and incorporating found and donated objects along the way.

Ravel (Camberwell), commissioned for Camberwell Arts Festival. My route linked sites historically connected with water in the borough.

 

Ravel: Knitting a Row, commissioned for Roam the Rows, Chester. I laid the yarn along one of the historic 'Rows' and returned, knitting in objects representing each of the shops I passed.