Penelope as a Verb

This work began as a means of self-exploration of the ways in which I work as a woman artist. I was influenced by the story of Penelope the weaver in Homers Odyssey, who weaves by day only to unweave again each night. In this way Penelope is able to suspend herself in this perpetual cycle of creation/destruction, weaving her own autonomous space and time around her. I became fascinated by the notion of the liminal space between these dualities, focussing in particular on bridging the gap between public/private in the art process.
I wanted to expose the normally hidden process by setting up a camera to record my actions of weaving and unweaving over 6 weeks. Without knowing how my installation would grow and change every day, the camera captured the process- where each part of my installation was created in response to a cultural textile item from a museum collection. I wove part of the room in response to one textile piece, and then un-wove my work, to change and re-weave it in response to another item, and so on in a continuous pattern over 6 weeks.
By capturing this self-explorative process, I was able to bridge the gap between ‘public/ private’ in the art world. Just like Penelope, the archetypal woman weaver, I wove my own space around me in a cycle of simultaneous creation/destruction which I would then invite the public to enter.