Flat Spring

Flat Spring
1997

Media: cotton binca, steel, paint 

Size: 750 x 750 x 200mm 

Exhibited:

2013 – Unruly Objects (one-person exhibition), Cornerstone Gallery and Arts Centre, Didcot, Oxfordshire. 

2008 – Locations (one-person exhibition), OVADA, Oxford. 

1999 – Taking Stock (one-person exhibition), Keele University Art Gallery.  

1997 – “…from the institution." (one-person exhibition), Stoke-on-Trent City Museum and Art Gallery.

About this work:

Flat Spring (1997) conforms to the order of sculpture seen in Mute, and shares a similar flesh-tinted palette. In this case, however the found qualities of the sculpture lie directly in its materiality, specifically the b

Binca cloth used. Flat Spring came into being as a direct response to coming across this oddly coloured material in a haberdashers. Not only was the colour unusual, the width of the fabric was also uncharacteristically over-sized. Binca is usually used in an instructional way, to teach children how to sew and embroider, or sometimes by occupational therapists as a tool during rehabilitation of those recovering from injuries to re-develop fine motor skills. It comes in a variety of weaves, with the one used in Flat Spring being particularly open, with bigger holes allowing for large stitches. Because of the properties of this over-sized material, I decided to make a giant embroidery hoop with heavy bars of rolled, welded and clamped steel on which the fabric could stretch out. Once together, the juxtaposition of fabric and metal brought about a sense of violent restraint. In this work, by utilising material properties, colour, characteristics of scale and language—the title of the work Flat Spring, is used to describe a type of contraceptive diaphragm—I explored imagined possibilities and anxieties relative to the tensions between gender politics and the personal, domestic and institutional in their broadest contexts. In this case, the relative size of diaphragm, embroidery hoop and sculpture make no logical sense, though the first two objects do share physical properties, if not purpose. It is here that I attempted to employ the audience’s imagination to make impertinent questions pertinent in their attempts to solve the conundrum posed by the object Flat Spring.