Sarah Milne at Hypha Studios
VERA BELL is drawn into a world of threads and patches.
You may have noticed Sarah Milne’s work on our back page not long ago. Even more recently she has had a small studio exhibition of her own at Hypha studios in Priory Meadow. It’s an odd venue (a vacant shop in Priory Meadow shopping centre) but very visible, and provides a little haven for passersby on their way to H&M or Boots.
Her work is, at the very least, unusual. Its character is ‘feminine’ in the broadly understood, slightly old-fashioned sense of sewing being ‘women’s work’. On closer examination its femininity, its feminism, is complex, multifaceted, at times opaque. It’s about damage, disintegration, re-forming, emerging through small chaos. She draws using random machine stitches, and uses vintage material as background and collage. Like that of artists she admires (among them Louise Bourgeois and Tracy Emin) her work is deeply personal. ‘I DID MY BEST’ is embroidered on a delicate piece of old patterned muslin, hung on a piece of driftwood. Fractured shards of tapestry surround the words, with blood-red thread dripping from the edges. On the left is some stained white lace, and some embroidered ripe poppies shedding random french-knotted seeds – opium and opiates or re-seeding and rebirth? Attached by threads to some of these broken tapestry pieces is a ladybird, struggling to fly away home.
It tells somehow what we all feel, we women who are biologically and hence emotionally tied to their children forever. We all did our best, many of us in adverse circumstances. We would all like, have liked, to emerge, to fly away, but supposing then it was too late, our house was on fire and our children all gone? Milne, delicately adjusting a small piece of thread around an embroidered ladybird, states that she has always been profoundly affected by the rhyme. The theme continues along – a fragment of one of those old Tesco hessian shopping bags, printed with ladybirds, with two or three more ladybirds marching away and out beyond on to the wall. As mothers, we are ourselves and not ourselves. The finished piece, therefore, she calls an ‘insecurity blanket’. For women, mothers, the fragmentary theme also resonates: how many shards of conversation, interrupted by demanding children, could I never recover? It isn’t that women are innately able to multi-task, more that the motherhood/childcare/work/partner/house/dog/cat/work/sleep/wake/work situation obliges them to learn.
And, we are in Hastings, we are by the sea, there are lifeboats and there are small boats. One work, The Shipping Forecast, depicts tangled threads and shreds of material, swirling waters, this time in blue, turquoise, flecks of white, and a background dyed in three colours, blue, grey-blue, yellow-white.The shape could be a boat, but it has become part of the sea, the sea is the boat. Further, the sea holds the key – written words from an ancient map, and written words hand-embroidered with a modern needle. Interesting here to note how old these crafts are, and how their use in artworks now carries much more than a surface meaning. Artists use tapestries, linocuts, traditional ceramics, knitting, crochet – all crafts now in danger of being artificially replaced, forgotten, lending an added layer of time-consciousness to their use. ‘WHEN, NOT IF’ is embroidered into the waves – a message of hope and determination, when, not if we get to the shore in this boat, or desperation, when, not if we die? ‘TERROR’, is the other yellow word. And the boat shape, now miniatured on my phone camera, turns into a shoe shape, kicking people into submission as they arrive buffeted by the waves.
Sarah Milne’s Stade:Landing was at Hypha Studio, Priory Meadow, from 5-10 October. More information about her work and textile and weaving classes can be found at SarahMilneArt.com
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