Afternoon Tea (2021)
<iframe src="https://prezi.com/p/an4yeznxsmr0/embed/" id="iframe_container" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen="" allow="autoplay; fullscreen" height="315" width="560"></iframe>To ‘Spin a Yarn’ means to tell a story. I spin yarns with my work. When I tell stories I think through the lineage and patterns that tangle craft stories together. Lines come together to create drawings and text; Yarns knot and tie complex narratives together through crochet, lace and knit; Blood-lines tell stories of behaviour patterns, knotting family tales with wider social and cultural structures. The patterns created reveals holes and gaps in the stories and invisible histories within the spaces between.
The Shadow of the Good Shepherd (2020)
These works focus on storytelling, mapping invisible histories within Irish society. I entangle these stories with traditional craft making, contemporary drawing and feminist writing to complicate issues of body politics and individual’s rights. This series of works are a collection of mapped sites in Ireland where invisible stories have emerged, telling a broader history of reproductive rights in Ireland.
Crochet Neurology (2018)
Patterns in craft and patterns of behaviour led me to inquiries into how brain neurology patterns; how thought and behaviour patterns persist through generations and through cultures. I webbed and crocheted brain connectivity and hormone molecules, exploring the combination of molecules that allow for empathy and solidarity. What creates the emotional content of our experiences, how that manifests in the body, how patterns develop. This work explores materials, methods and theory of crochet techniques to visually illustrate chemical structure of Serotonin and the structure of Stress hormones.
Dimensions: Patterns (2018)
I crocheted myself to my work as I told the stories of my personal connection to family ties and knots, patterns and familial histories.
Trace: Cailleach (2016)
‘Cailleach’ meaning crone in Irish. Working ‘free-form crochet’ to my grandmother’s crochet from the 1930’s, led to the creation of “new family heirlooms” and a deepening of my interest in lineage and patterns, familial stories and histories.
Trace: Maighden (2016)
‘Maighden’ meaning maiden in Irish. This series communicates delicacy and femininity, bloodline and pattern. Repeated body casts of lace-like structures emanates repeated behavioural patterns through lineage, bloodlines, tracing histories. (Related themes of purity and pattern were first explored in “Resonance the Being” exhibition 2013.)
Trace: Mather (2016)
‘Mather’ meaning mother in Irish. With these works I revisited original drawings and imagery to create 3-D figurative sculptural drawings in steel wire. Light and shadow are integral factors of the work. They explore ideas of the linear elements of our maternal history and how elemental it is in the make up of who we are. (Created as a framework to ‘Lace’ works from 2009.)
Resonance the Being (2013)
A duo-exhibition with sound artist Jamie Sturrock. Jamie and I worked with themes of purity and pattern through the common metaphor of gold thread and converged in the space to create to an ethereal, dreamlike atmosphere of sound and vision. Through the metaphor and medium of gold thread we explored ‘the celestial’, related it to the spark of neural transmitters firing and grounded it in feminist discourse.
Lace (2009)
Lace follows themes of femininity, body-dysmorphic representation, personal history and lineage. This body of work consists of drawn glass etching on large, layered glass pieces. Shadow and light make lace-like floating figurative drawings. “Lace” has been instrumental in the themes of following works.
Emma Clear 