Faye Butler
This Honours project considers aspects of the 20th century domestic textiles within my personal collection; the beauty of the linens, the mystery surrounding their creation and their subsequent rejection and donation to secondhand shops.
My focus has been on re-contextualising doilies and tray- and table-cloths as contemporary art objects, translating these lived craft textiles into new artefacts.
My work is informed by domesticity, living conditions in the mid 20th century and how these correlate to the current experience of being ‘shut-in’ during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using copper mesh and vitreous enamel as my primary materials, I have constructed impractical and unserviceable vessels to explore metaphor, meaning and narrative. I have also fabricated empty gloves from enamelled mesh ‘tattooed’ with the stitching by which the anonymous makers of my linens are now known. Both are exploring my thoughts on being isolated from community and fearful of the unpredictable as well as the fragility and vulnerability of our present situation.
Throughout this year my practice speaks of the changing role of women within craft and culture through relationships between mid-20th century housewives and myself during this unprecedented period. Intimate and poetic, the works evoke expressions of identity and memory, becoming commemorations of the year that was.
The Danse Macabre, 2020
Copper mesh, vitreous enamel, found doilies, cotton thread, photographic decals, copper wire, tablecloth, monofilament
500mm x 850mm x 850mm
The Season of Singing Has Come, 2020
Copper mesh, vitreous enamel, cotton thread
600mm x 600mm x 40mm
Doulton, 2020
Copper mesh, vitreous enamel
80mm x 200mm x 180mm
Ode, 2020
Copper mesh, vitreous enamel, cotton thread, sewing needle, found tray cloth
60mm x 400mm x 270mm