Text Fragments

Text Fragments 2015

Second hand cotton handkerchiefs, cotton embroidery thread

4 pieces – dimensions various

In this series of works I have responded to the idea of fragility from a number of perspectives including the psychological and the material. I have used several pieces of found text that are in themselves fragile by virtue of their fragmentary and ephemeral nature which I have transposed and embroidered onto secondhand handkerchiefs.

Each text fragment suggests to me a particular quality of fragility; the existential “God seems sus” articulates the frailty of uncertainty whereas “Baby, I still love u…” conveys the vulnerability and fragility of human relationships. I found the word “THEM” scratched onto the interior panel of a train carriage this single word brings to mind ideas of the ‘other’ and separateness and at its extreme a paranoid fear of others by a fragile psyche. “Out of Order” could equally be a statement about a machine or the frailty of the human body and mind.

My particular interest in these found texts is in the actual handwriting which is both expressive and personal and they remind me of haiku and concrete poems and just like the handkerchiefs they are fragile and ephemeral and destined to be scrunched up in a pocket and lost or discarded.