Family Settings

2005

30cm x 42 cm x 3.5cm

 

Description

Heavy foldout book covered in table linen, some stiffened with plaster. Family photographs of gatherings around the tablecloth. Six hand embroidered double-sided napkins.

 

Themes and Storylines

Unease, discomfort and tension underneath the celebratory surface

 

Ambiguities and ambivalences: orderly arrangements of dense patterns on one side are dissolved, distorted, disheveled on the other – underneath the solid field of neat rows of daisies the unruly tangles of roots, underneath orderly tallies a mass of crossed lines. Only one side can be seen at a time, neither allows a glimpse of the other. Yet there is always a hidden underside, sometimes in continuation, more often in juxtaposition.

 

The tablecloth unifies and provides a common setting, promoting precarious harmonies in family rites, ceremonies and ritual, a blank surface easily stained where the vicissitudes of life leave their traces.

 

Family ties and cover-ups. Stains and strains. The heaviness of convention.

 

“This bit of whiteness, this tablecloth suffices to anchor the house to its center.”

 Bachelard, Gaston (1994), The Poetics of Space, translated by Maria Jolas, Beacon Press, Boston, p.52

 

Ironers and Shakers by Deirdre Nelson