Blood on Silk A survey show at Campbelltown Arts Centre, Campbelltown Australia.
Blood on Silk: Field of Flowers, 2013, canvas, paint, fabrics and found objects, each plinth 60 x 80 x70 cm(h) and painted wall section size variable.
This work consists of thirty museum type display units on plinths or padded ottomans. On each will sit three or more hand sewing baskets re-lined with beaded floral fabrics, embroidered flowers, oya or gold paper flowers over the original red, pink or orange linings of the baskets. This work references cultural material brought to the UK by Sir Aurel Stein and his archaeological expeditions, specifically from Dunhuang and Miran in China. Early textiles including panels of flowers from Buddhist temple canopies were loaned to the British Museum, British Library, the India Office and the V and A. When in London I was able to research some of the textile material removed by Stein and now in the Victoria and Albert Museum collection including the silk flowers in the photograph below. It is though that originally they formed canopies or fields of flowers within Buddhist temples along the silk route. The textile collection is being moved to a new building and is not accessible at the moment.
The sewing baskets formerly held the tools of trade. The relatively low height of the plinths/ ottomans focuses the viewer’s attention onto the bottom or the interior of the basket. These interiors have been relined with flowers.
Blood on Silk: As per Instructions 1,2,3 and 4, 2013-2014, canvas, paint and nails.
Installed at Artspace Sydney in late 2013, the work Blood on Silk: As per instructions I was exhibited in the exhibition, Notes on the Works a survey exhibition by Ian Milliss.
As part of Milliss’ open ended practice, Ian had given instructions to other artists for the production of artworks, referencing works he made in the early 1970s. These instructions were – use strips of fabric 200 to 250mm wide each painted a single colour and then nail to the wall as you want.
The three later works Blood on Silk: As per Instructions 2,3 and 4 were made in 2014 again referencing the code of the barber’s pole and its subsequent distortion or mutation. The code utilised in the first of this series is the pattern made by eight drops of blood falling from one metre. photo credit Alex Wisser
(Above) Blood on Silk: Site of production, 2014 Video 2.20 mins. As installed at Campbelltown Arts Centre projected onto a black wall
A repetitive unveiling of the crook, more formally known as the cubital crease, of the human arm reveals the site of blood retrieval as well as the vulnerability and grittiness of misuse in that area of the body. The image of the arm is isolated from any understanding that could be gained from the remainder of the body
The means of providing blood and blood products into the legal and illegal medical systems is complex, highly technical and fraught with issues of safety, cost and coercion. The vulnerability of the repetitive exposing of that section of the arm relocates the crux of the issue with the individual producer of that blood whether or not they do that for economic return within the wider economic framework of medicine
The single work Blood on Silk: Campbelltown (below) uses layers of handmade silk paper both to define the structure of the gallery space and to partially conceal it. Working as a semi permeable membrane some things are allowed to pass and others held. The silk paper is beautiful, isolating and with its references to connective tissues and funeral shrouds, forlorn, invoking the ideas and experiences of absence.
Onto this work is projected the second series of work , the three video works Blood on Silk: Trade 2011,2012 and 2013. In a series of three month long residencies over three years at Caravansarai in Istanbul Davies investigated the overlay of trade; the older silk trading routes with the newer routes for bio-products including blood. The works she produced during these residencies includes these meditative, almost abstracted video works. Shot from the rooftop terrace of the residency down six floors to the street where hardware shops are opening up in the morning. The choreography of the street is slowly revealed as each prepares to trade
Blood on SIlk: Turn To/Turn Away