I am too, too large!
(2021)

This work was shown in the graduate showcase They Had Four Years at Generator Projects, Dundee.

I am too, too large! takes the form of a sculptural tent and scattered pillows. Wax artichokes form the tent walls while individual thistle leaves are sewn into pillowcases - a dreamlike confusion of textile designs and elements from nature. Using a tent frame belonging to my great-grandmother, the work attempts to be a space for coexistence across mortal boundaries of time and death. Investigating the difference between lives lived two generations apart, the tent is considered as the only space outside a family home that my great-grandmother lived independently. Prompted by an unfinished embroidered bedspread, repetitive making processes such as wax casting and sewing meditate on the work of hands. The artichoke is the thistle’s cultivated relative - questioning the sameness and difference of lives lived at different times and in different bodies. I am too, too large! is a quote borrowed from a postcard my great-grandmother sent her father while camping. Perhaps inspired by the heightened sense of one’s body’s proportions when inside a tent, her words lend themselves to this installation in which the common embodied experiences of women such as sleep, handiwork and dreaming appear to fill the space.