Inverness Museum and Art Gallery, Inverness, until 10 September 2011

BIRDSONG, the fourth and final Craft Spotlight exhibition for 2011, features work in textiles and sound in a collaboration between Forres based artist Jennifer Cantwell and sound designer Dave Martin.

As part of the HI~ARTS Making Progress initiative the exhibition is the culmination of a period of mentoring and business support for mid-career makers enabling the production of new work, further professional development and creative expansion of individual practice. Throughout this series of shows each of the four selected artists have visually demonstrated the value of this type of investment, lead by creative process to successfully push the boundaries of their own work and expand public exposure to what Contemporary Craft practice can be.

Jennifer Cantwell's birdboxes (courtesy of the artist)

Cantwell’s work has always engaged with a healthy element of both experimentation and play, and her striking contemporary designs have established Sporran Nation as a distinctive brand. There is also a wider exploration of the nature of Craft practice in her work which finds a voice here in this show. It is wonderful to see this amplified through the creative development process and to see the artist combining knitting, sound processing software and mobile phone technology in such an interesting way, investigating “immigration, emigration, identity and belonging”.

Both language and craft techniques such as embroidery, lacemaking and knitting exhibit patterns unique to a particular region, and these regional accents through the natural medium of birdsong provided the starting point for the artist’s latest body of work.

Cantwell recorded birds and ambient sounds in four locations in Forres, Ullapool, Kelburn and Glenuig, utilising the sound waves, midi templates and velocity peaks and manipulating them to create unique designs woven on a 24 stitch punchcard knitting machine. Still maintaining the connection with the hand-made, this semi-industrial method of construction combined with the regional sound signature of each location, grounded in the natural world, sets up an interesting dialogue between craft, technology and nature.

The exhibition includes a film with commentary by the artist (see link below to view) on the influences and ideas behind the work, together with a knitted map of the UK and Ireland incorporating regional patterns. Adjacent to this work, a visual – presumably of one of the recordings – reads curiously like a pen and ink drawing or a piece of hand stitching. The immediacy of these marks and their ambiguity – is this a human mark or a machine generated one? – also reflect the evolving human mark in relation to craft practice in the contemporary world.

The main exhibition, a series of bird boxes clothed in the knitted patterns of their aural thumbprint on a particular day and time are accompanied by headphones and connected to each other by a series of seemingly woven wires in black, red, green and yellow. Cantwell references notions of home and belonging in the “nest” of the bird boxes whilst linking them to the idea of virtual communities and online communication in the interconnected wires between each location box.

The knitted exterior of each bird box is immediately tactile and intimate due to the associations with hand-made clothing, familial comfort and domesticity. In ‘Kelburn 6pm Sunday’ the different hues of red and orange with accents of metallic thread combine the sonic impression of natural sounds of birdsong with the sounds of human dwelling such as distant traffic. The knitted pattern based on this soundscape is intriguingly reminiscent of an interior motherboard or hard drive.

‘Forres 10am Tuesday’, featuring human voices, evokes the human and the natural isolated in the exterior pattern and variations of colour between blues, greys and greens, contrasted with orange, red and pink. As a visual/ sound experience each bird box inspires curiosity and feels very much like the beginning of a greater body of work exploring place and identity in a multi sensory way.

The potential layering of meaning in terms of the human landscape and interdisciplinary techniques is one of the most exciting aspects of Contemporary Craft practice in the region and whilst the capacity of such creative development to lead promotion and production is not yet widely acknowledged or understood, artists such as Cantwell draw our attention to Craft as central to the visual culture and history of the Highlands and Islands.

These stitched, knitted or woven marks have communicated over generations, and like verbal and written language they continue to evolve. What is also central to this exhibition is the fluid relationship between Fine Art and Craft practices and conceptual development, which in terms of the promotion of the region and its Creative Industries begs further investment and development in the future.

Throughout the Craft Spotlight shows each of the selected artists have demonstrated excellence, ingenuity and originality facilitated by the mentoring programme and time spent developing both their ideas and techniques in synthesis. It is essential that the Making Progress programme, and the role of the Highland Council Exhibitions team at IMAG in providing a public platform for such work, continue.

© Georgina Coburn, 2011

Links

• Jennifer Cantwell film
• Jennifer Cantwell
• IMAG
• Making Progress 2011