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The Pin Series

Because of the cyclical way in which I work, a series of related pieces will often span several years and this has been the case with the Pin Series.

The series started in 2001 with the development of the Pin Ritual performance. Originally I had a simple sculptural idea about making a piece of translucent cloth heavy with pins: I was interested in the idea of adding weight to something that might not be strong enough to hold it. However, this idea quickly developed into a performance piece, when I realised that the simple act of pinning gave people a safe space in which to talk. Something about the fact that I am working with my hands in such a familiar and soothing way encourages the sharing of tales, secrets, thoughts and memories.

The later sculptures, Scatter and Quiver, were made in 2006 because I wanted to return to the original idea of making hanging sculptures from fabric made heavy with pins.

Close-up of 'Scatter' in progress in the studio.'Quiver' crumpled up during making. I'm thinking of making a companion piece that could be displayed like this.When I exhibited 'Quiver', people were able to stroke the pins - they are surprisingly tactile and seductive and because there’s a lot of them, they’re not nearly as sharp as you expect.'Scatter' is a piece about the futility of repetitive labour. Because of the way it was made, pins continually dropped out as it was made, so its making proved to be its unmaking.Unlike previous works in the series, 'Quiver' features pins that go right through the fabric and hang free on the other side. The name ‘Quiver’ comes from the way the fabric and the pins move when people approach the piece.'Quiver' shown from the back. You can see how the pins work loose slightly, although I was surprised by how stable this piece was. During the Broken Threads exhibition, even with lots of people touching it, the vast majority of pins stayed in.An early performance of 'Pin Ritual' at Spike Island, Bristol in November 2001.'Pin Ritual' performed on a bright but ferociously cold day in Budapest, December 2001.'Pin Ritual' in between performances during Round The Houses, Sept 2005. It's important to me that the piece also works as a sculpture when I'm not performing.Something about the simple familiarity of pinning encourages people to talk to me.Hard at work on 'Pin Ritual' during Round The Houses, an open studio event in Clifton, Bristol in Sept 2005.'Pin Ritual' is an ongoing performance piece that has been performed regularly since 2001. Whilst repetitively pinning a long piece of translucent material, I invite and exchange confidences, stories, secrets and memories.An early image of 'Scatter' before it had lost many pins.'Scatter' took 31 hours & 24 minutes to make, spread over a period of 8 weeks. I pinned 280 rows using at least 12,880 pins but only a fraction of these now remain. The tiny snags and pinholes bear witness to the thousands of missing pins.Although I always intend my lines to be straight, invariably they aren’t! This organic quality of ‘the same but different’ and ‘organic minimalism’ is something I highly value in my work.

Further work from this series can be found on The Pin Series Flickr page.

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