Wednesday, November 17, 2010

between our moments of labor.

Film Stills, Between Counting.

I am not with the energy to find words today so I will let this intriguing and eloquent artist speak for herself. Nicola Naismith often works with video or installation to talk about such issues as the everyday object, hand work, and labor.

Betweens

Exploring the ordinary qualities of everyday items for example the white shirt, the sewing needle and obsolete technology, Nicola Naismith uses a combination of digital and analogue processes. Simple objects are subject to complex questions concerning production, labour, value and the human machine. Naismith represents these ideas through works that unravel operations between hand, eye, brain, body and machine whilst referencing industrial and globalisation contexts.

Process, 10, 000 hand sewing needles.

With an extensive interest in industrial production the work explores the relationship between manufactured object and hand skill. How can the needles be contained in such large quantities within the hand?

from white collar worker

Through theoretical and practical investigations the ordinariness of the white shirt became transformed into extraordinariness, the transformation effected by the crossing of boundaries between art, textiles, sculpture and architecture.

from white collar worker

The shifting medium of working, between traditional hand skills and technological processes retained the constant of white from the original shirt as an anchor point on which to pivot the expanding concepts. Working through purchasing and unpicking, subverting and documenting, a key question developed: Does being a ‘hand’ maker inhibit practice? This expanded into: What is it that constitutes something being classed as ‘hand’ made? To finally: What is a person minute?

Film still from 14 person minutes.

You can read about all her projects and see more images at her website.

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