Silk Tangles -Textile Narratives: "Days

"Days - A Liminal Site" was completed in 2015 as part of my Master's of Art and Design research into The Domestic Mundane. This research sought to understand what happens in a domestic situation as mundane activity and why it happens. Using my own domestic situation as the site, I explored how choices are made about the uses of time as a reflection of value. In this 21st century home influences constantly come into the environment especially with digital penetration of the public sphere into the private and personal realms of the home. The research disclosed how my mundane actions reflect a value driven process of sifting, selecting, rejecting, modifying or incorporating these possible elements into everyday life.

This is a woven and assembled metaphorical piece representing this process as it "creates" the fabric of a domestic mundane.

There are three spheres in the domestic everyday - the personal, the domestic (private) and the public (worldly or political).These realms are not discrete from each other but rather engage with each other holistically. The home is the site of actions and engagements that result in liminal transfers through the boundaries of these realms. These transfers result in the threshold synthesis of something new - receiving from both the outside or public realm and the inside or personal realm. In my research it was apparent that my home operated in this sense as the site where each act was unique, newly evidencing a restating of inner values. A site of continuous decision making.

"Days - A Liminal Site" is a material realisation of this subconscious process, a liminal transfer evidencing the creation of my domestic everyday from the enclosing cultural and physical environment. The wefts used for the hand-weaving of "Days - A Liminal Site" have been assigned symbolic significance. The newspaper is the locally produced daily news, which was selected to locate the work - in time, and place. This is the current geography of her existence. It also stands for the media - both print, and non-print.

There is a strip woven of recycled courier bags and plastic supermarket bags which references the dependence my household has on a global, transported network of supply and the positioning of this domestic mundane in the mainstream of societal supply chains.

Reclaimed enviro-bags symbolise my attempts to support ecologically friendly, locally produced options wherever possible. The woven cabbage tree fronds acknowledge the huge role the native natural world has in my everyday life, while the woven barley straw stalks speak of the agriculturally and culturally altered environment that this domestic situation is located within. The assorted electronic cables speak for themselves. The weft threads for these panels are ones usually used for creating fine clothing or domestic textiles - a choice made to reflect the intimate personal nature that holds my values and that makes the ultimate selections informing my everyday life.