CONNIE HOPE

My sculptures speak to the appearance and abject functionality of embryonic structures, the mutation of matter and the nature of facade.  

Weaving allows surface to be created from the hollow. It is the passing of tangible information through empty space that translates as the surrender of material to the net. It’s all-consuming. In and out, through and through, over and over again. The addition of layers in a linear manner confirms that monotony can produce variety. 

The Skin Hangings are an ongoing series of woven interfaces composed of brushed, laminated and bare cotton. Particular attention is paid not only to the process by which they are formed, but the subtleties in tonal difference in the materials I select. Neutral hues undulate in an off white spectrum, where dirty buffs attempt to verge on yellow and occasionally arrive just before grey. The somewhat restrictive colour palette denotes minor details as the major aesthetic characteristics of the work.

My invested interest in the skin as our sensory surveillance system, which protects the body it binds from the external environment, is as continuous as the passage of skin itself. With all its en-foldings and contours, its orifices and echoes, my weaving attempts to imitate the way flesh performs as drapery for the body. When interior and exterior divides become less distinguishable, I am alert to the way in which flesh continues to act as an identifier, the visual information that defines the husks of human existence. And so, a more efficacious demonstration of my subject matter became apparent when I introduced armatures during installation. Hysteresis is a compilation of the Skin Hangings rearranged into alternative formats. This work performed like dismembered anatomy. Insofar as the armatures presented as a body in space. The sculpture’s bones were covered by the woven pieces like fabricated flesh. 

Cross sectional drawings of female reproductive systems influenced the formal qualities of Hysteresis and its second iteration. Bulbous yet confined, these sculptures allude to the possibility for growth, mutation and replication. Or more so, they are merely surrogates for skin. 

In Sadie Plant’s Zeros and Ones, she details the relationship between woman and machine. Her discussion on weaving aided how I contextualise my work in the rhythmic interplay between surroundings and openings. I realised the constant fiddling was not of trivial importance when the detail of repetition began to make sense. It was the process of making the undone, done that allowed me to take instruction from my medium.

In Fleshhold, new presentational modes were explored in terms of staging. This installation was an attempt to allow the sculpture to be more discrete. In contrast to Hysteresis that exists in harsh lighting, both artificial and natural, overexposure leaves no space for the work to conceal itself from being viewed at its most earnest. 

I endeavor for my process to remain cyclical. First the woven surfaces are physically created, then manipulated into larger sculptural forms. At this stage observational drawings take the work back into two dimensions, alongside digital renders of the sculptures, these secondary works avail compositional considerations for the next assemblage. Flitting between micro and macro, as if switching lenses, permits a different perspective but the process always imitates outcome. In this way the weaves are self organising, unaffected by my influence and desires. The work pertains to the ambivalence of constraint and release and I am dedicated to exploring the way in which repetitive actions send messages.