Round hole, Square peg

Materials:/ Reclaimed line stitched with flax and linen thread. Pine wood table with pine marquetry.

The quilt, with its softness and fluidity, represents the self, constantly shifting, adapting, and resisting definition. The table, rigid and unyielding, embodies societal structures and expectations. Yet, the pattern refuses to be contained, spilling onto the surface of the table the parts of the quilt falling off the edge of the table, much like the self-pushing against imposed limitations. 

The marquetry elements, crafted by Andrew Stephen Lister, one of my tutors from 1996-98, introduce a dialogue between materials. His meticulous woodworking parallels the appliqué and textile processes within my practice, highlighting a shared language of construction and craft. Two decades later, we both hold studio space in the same building, and his influence remains integral to how I approach making.

The table itself is often a sight of tension and conflict at falling foul of unspoken social choreographic rules. How we sit at a table, how gestures are meant to conform into expected behaviours, and how deviation is subtly or overtly policed. reflecting on the rigid binary gender codes of the 1970s, where masculinity and femininity were strictly defined, leaving little space for fluidity. Even today, while conversations around gender have evolved, societal norms continue to enforce restrictive, with binary expectations.

This exchange, across time and medium, mirrors the central themes of the piece, conversations between fabric and wood, between flexibility and structure, between personal identity and the societal frameworks that seek to contain it.