Ridge's Monologue Print

I am inspired by life's quest, the force that draws us through our thorny paths. I find it fascinating how predictable and startling people are at the same time and overwhelmed by how awesome humankind is, how beautifully designed, something I thought a lot about while breastfeeding my daughter, who so neatly fit into the curve of my body - inside and out. These thoughts give me vertigo and I have to convince myself it is all ordinary to get my balance again. My current work explores union and communion and the construction and distruction within. Societal pressure versus primal urges. Are they symbiotic, or opposing forces? The literal abundance of fabric and thread as domestic content and construction, not limited to gender, makes our relationship to it very close. They are a huge part of communion and relationships, family sofas, beds, carpet... When I am sewing figures, I think of the thread being strands of DNA and the stitches binary codes and the fabric (our second skin anyway) a grid and that leads me onto String theory, experiences happening along side each other with endless alternative outcomes, it all just feels like cosmic alignment! It really makes me think that paint is just so pointless... I use the mattress as a backgroundless background that holds weight of experience conceptually, spiritually and physically. Blood, sweat and tears like tree rings in its core. Its presence in our rights of passage, our sleep, rest, thoughts, dreams, the theatre of life spilled out onto it. How could I work on anything else! It is a ready-made canvas, it allows my ideas to penetrate it and collaborate with it to unearth a supposed breath-taking, yet ordinary, history or herstory.
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