Kitchen Sink Dramas

Kitchen Sink Dramas

I made these from my mothers old cotton dishcloths.  Full of holes they were. I was iinspried by old needlework samplers and I wanted to explore questions about what we save and discard from our homes, materially and psychologically.   In the darned and blanket-stitched holes of the work, I have tried to embody the processes by which we lay down and elaborate our memories or suppress and build defences around them.

Throughout my own life,  some of my most vivid memories are from scenes around the kitchen sink, from the pleasant smells of cooking to the more traumatic scenes of familial conflict.   I’ve highlighted this ambivalence we often feel about the place we call home by the embroidered texts on the work “No place like Home” and “Kitchen Sink Dramas”, the later referencing the eponymous cultural movement of the 1950s and 60s depicting the sordid aspects of domestic reality.

I want them ot hold all the childlike naivety and optimism of needlework samplers created centuries ago by young women preparing their trousseau.  But now the big question is: to frame or not to frame.  I love the way they just hang as an installation but then if i really want to elevate to to iconic status of embroidery samplers I suppose they really should be framed::::