Structure, Sign and Play - New 'stitching' works.



Ann-Marie Tully, Deconstructed Pastoral Scene I. Felt, calico,
recovered upholstery and textile print, black cotton thread,
  40cm (H) x 55cm (W).

Ann-Marie Tully, Deconstructed Pastoral Scene I. Felt, calico,
recovered upholstery and textile print, black cotton thread,
  40cm (H) x 55cm (W). Detail.

Ann-Marie Tully, Deconstructed Pastoral Scene I. Felt, calico,
recovered upholstery and textile print, black cotton thread,
  40cm (H) x 55cm (W). Detail.

Ann-Marie Tully, Deconstructed Pastoral Scene I. Felt, calico,
recovered upholstery and textile print, black cotton thread,
  40cm (H) x 55cm (W). In Progress.



Ann-Marie Tully, Deconstructed Pastoral Scene I. Felt, calico,
recovered upholstery and textile print, black cotton thread,
40cm (H) x 55cm (W). In Progress.

These appliqued pieces relate to a 'fetish' I have about the 'ghosts' that occupy discarded materials. The upholstery pattern in this design is a fabric off cut that I have been hanging onto for years. the muted greens and loping pattern belongs in my mind to a bygone Edwardian and Victorian sensibility; harbouring a romantic sensibility - not our own. A few years ago, I attended an interdisciplinary conference at Cumbria University about 'living in landscape'. As one can imagine a lot of the local presentations concentrated on the English pastoral environment, feted by Wordsworth, Ruskin and other artists of the Victorian age for its 'pristine' and 'un-touched' natural beauty. It was a real surprise to find out that the characteristic stark hilly vistas, and the sweeping grassland structure of the English countryside is a result of large scale and sustained human intervention in this environment: de-forestation, industrialisation and agriculture - it can be said that the little sheep (put there by humans for social, fiscal and utilitarian capital), have transformed the landscape.

With this in mind I considered this pastoral scene as an ironic and appropriate setting for the 'reinvention' of this Victorian-style fabric (so aligned with the textile mills and industrial sensibility that occupied the North of England). In the manner of Derrida's playful aporeas, where internal elements in a text are shown to be in conflict by his deconstructive 'piercings'; this 'pierced visual text' (which in its patched 'bad sewing' form, can be said to have a deconstructive aesthetic), combines the idealised pastoral environment with the products of an industrial nemesis.