Skip to content

Rosie H. Cook

  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • The Making Connections Project
  • Projects
  • Press and Publications

Projects

Conservation and Climate Change

The Sound of Shadows

Making Connections

2017 Asialink Arts Residency

Asialink+AsiaSoc.23March(1)

  Crazed Puppets

Crazed Puppets 04

 This is not a Kowangan

bundengan-01

#APTCCARN5

aptccarn5

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...

Instagram

Tonala, my Mexican cat, supervising the huge amount of Aubusson wool I brought back from my visit to la Creuse. I picked up an entire rubbish bag full of Aubusson wool from the “Fête à la brocante” in the village of Ars, where I went to primary school. It was only 10€, and now I regret not buying everything there, although I have nowhere to store it and even less use for it right now. A girl can dream though! And Tonala also came home with me from the Creuse this week — he was purchased from Mexico by my grandfather many decades ago, and lived in the bathroom at my grandparents’ house. I don’t know anything about Mexican ceramics but I did some research and learned that this style of burnished pottery is known as Tonala, named for the Valley of Tonalà as well as the ceramic traditions of the pre-Hispanic Tonalteca people. An unusual juxtaposition of cultures, currently dominating my studio as I try to get caught up on my writing!
I picked up this small paperback at a Noz discount superstore, priced at 5€ instead of 18€. Its cover is misleading as it looks like one of those Taschen-style collections of colour plates, but when I had flipped through it I was surprised to see it had at least a 50-50 ratio of writing to photos, so I took it home with me. I just finished reading it and it was such a great collection of essays taking down the orientalist and objectifying colonial postcard trend. Every postcard reproduced in here is framed by the essay topics, which gives a real depth to each photograph as you interpret and identify clues to the stories of the women whose images were commodified and sent “home” from the french colonies in Algeria, Tunisia or Morocco. With the exception of the last essay (by a white male politician 🤷‍♀️ who owns most of the postcards and couldn’t resist talking about the “seins nus” that “éveillent une admiration sans mélange… perfection de beaucoup de modèles” 🤮— “bare breasts that awake an admiration of the perfection of many of the models”) the authors are women and the text feels like a re-appropriation. I’m not very articulate (what else is new) but I really appreciated this small book and I’m hoping to find another two in the same collection, about Egyptian women, and about North African Jewish women. “Femmes d’Afrique du Nord - Cartes postales (1885-1930)” third edition 2010 by Leïla Sebbar, Christelle Taraud and Jean-Michel Belorgey, Éditions Bleu Autour #rosieshelfie
Whilst I’m documenting my little collection of projects… here are three lovely textiles James brought back for me from Thailand last month. It took a lot of effort for him to hunt down small scrappy pieces, textiles which have been dismantled in order to be repurposed. Tourists are expected to buy beautiful new textiles, or beautiful antique textiles, so I appreciate the effort he went to on my behalf… The bottom two seem to be from baby carriers (not likely to be the same one though). Again, looking forward to working on these small scale pieces for a portfolio, probably with very minimal intervention, focusing more on safe mounting for wall display. #textileconservation #thaitextiles
Today I received these four conveniently small textiles (each around 45cm x 45cm) in the mail from my mother. They are from my father’s house and feature more or less vividly in my memories from 30-odd years ago. They don’t have any particular value or provenance that I am aware of — he would pick things up in brocantes that caught his eye and fit with his general hippy decor. Their appeal to me now is primarily their size and condition — it’s very handy to have a couple of miniature rugs in my portfolio to demonstrate mounting and hanging techniques, as well as the opportunity to give them some TLC for before/after shots. The woven bag has a rather garish pompom added by a previous owner, which I might replace with something better matched. I’m undecided about the level of intervention I want to pursue, but as these are mine to do with as I wish, I may try and push myself with a bit of restoration! #textileconservation
The first step with this Persian kilim has been untangling the warps and wefts, and temporarily sewing up the damaged edges so they don’t unravel further. It’s been a great exercise in patience and blanket stitch! I have done a tiny bit of reweaving/tightening up loose patches just to neaten things up, but there’s a lot of damaged warps that will need replacing (nearly all of them, to be honest) before I actually attempt proper reweaving. This rug belongs to my Iranian friend Afarin; we were sitting on it in the garden at her toddler’s birthday party when I made the unexpected request to borrow it so I can mess around with wool and warps for the summer… it’s quite a nice change for me to think of it as a living object that will return to partying eventually. #textileconservation #kilim #rugconservation #kilimrepair
One for the museum worker memes 🥲🫠😝
It’s a bit chaotic but it’s chock full of projects on the go, and above all it’s my own space, where I can believe in myself as some kind of professional. Professional what? I’m not sure… but it involves textiles whether it’s academic writing, artistic collaboration, conservation, digital humanities, grant applications, or my own embroidery practice. Everything is kind of nebulous and unclear, but it’s also good to let go of the compulsion to classify and categorise, the pursuit of perfectionism, and the need to define everything. Consequently I cannot think of suitable hashtags, a downside perhaps 😝
@karl_and_karl says he is NOT giving up his new-found spot on the rug I’m planning to re-weave (actually he’s just yawning but he looks ferocious and he’s refusing to move).
Shelfie time! No trip to a museum is complete without a visit to the bookshop, and the Quai Branly bookshop had a few treasures in stock for me. The catalogue for the Route des chefferies exhibition was a must-have, and it has so much essential reading as well as fascinating deep dives into the chefferie culture of West Cameroon. I also went from knowing nothing about the Cameroonian Ndop textile practice, to being utterly enamoured with it, so this book which covers everything from the raw materials, making, design symbolism and usage, was hard to resist. And then this sweet book about children’s costumes in the Asian textiles at the Musée Guimet was a bargain for only 12 euros — and an opportunity to also learn more about the Bengali collector Krishna Riboud whose legacy the collection is founded on. Children’s clothes, similar to puppet costumes, are such an underrated but charming category of textiles 😍 #rosieshelfie
My order of “one of everything” 2/20 silk thread has arrived from @pipers_silks 😍😍😍 I’ve missed having thread rainbows in my life! Now to identify a suitable storage method and organise them by colour #rosielovesrainbows #threadrainbow
I’m still processing and reading about the exhibition I saw on Saturday “Sur la route des chefferies du Cameroun”. It seemed a bit excessive when I was planning it to travel all the way to Paris, spend 3 hours at a single exhibition, and then turn around and travel back home again.
I’m on the train home after a lightning fast trip to the Musée du Quai Branly (I refuse to use the full name, sorry). I went to Paris exclusively to see their temporary exhibition “Sur la route des chefferies du Cameroun” (On the road of the chieftainships of Cameroon) because I had read some good things about it. What a delightful exhibition! I have to take some time to think about all the things I want to say. But no lack of first person voices here: an intercultural collaborative focused on the intersections of visible and invisible, curated by Cameroonians, hand in hand with the Cameroon chiefs who generously lent their prized possessions and filmed many didactic videos in order to teach visitors in France about their living heritage practices. This photo I took of a glittering 1990s throne belonging to the Bansoa chieftainship gives an indication of the quality of the lighting and scenography, with open displays which communicate reverence but also contemporary “realness” — this throne should be revered for itself, its current power and significance, and not just because it is an aesthetically pleasing museum object (which it isn’t — it’s heading back home to the Bansoa chief after the exhibition closes later this month). Anyway I’m rambling (and exhausted). Just really such a mood booster after that awful “Sioux” show in Lyon.
I just saw a really uninspiring and frustrating exhibition on Native American culture, at the Musée des Confluences in Lyon. The entire exhibition was about the fascination and representation of Native Americans in French/European culture, and featured no social commentary or self-awareness. Only two exhibits featured First Nations voices — quite literally, although the second, a video of the Lakota artist whose voice was drowned out by the projection of selected Western “cowboy and Indian” movies in the next room. This reel, a recording in Lakota languages by Walter Little Moon, is the most poignant material I saw and yet it has no accompanying wall text, it’s just wedged onto the end of a display case with no context.
I’m working on a collaborative textile art project and the artist specifically told me I can’t get it wrong since he also liked “failed experiments”, so it’s very liberating at this time when I need to not be worrying about mistakes 🪡
I haven’t been able to work on my Quinto Acuto sampler for weeks, thanks to toddler parent life. This afternoon I finally sat down for 2 hours and happily stitched along the top section on the left… off by 10 stitches because I aligned it on the wrong line of the grid. I am so frustrated, especially since the last time I stitched — the section on the top right — it was also misaligned, and I had to frog it all. I was so careful to make sure it was on the right horizontal line, I somehow completely missed the vertical alignment. I feel like my brain is made of porridge, it’s so hot and I’m so tired all the time. I keep thinking things will ease up soon and I can reinvest time into my stitching and conservation practice… but it’s just not happening.
Just received this very sweet, very soft cotton jumper from my mother who knitted it for Taiga! I can’t wait to see him in it — although perhaps when the heatwave ends 🥵 #rosielovescircles
Amazing picture of me by my sister @bindweedmind, inspired by the cover of the iconic comic “My favorite thing is monsters” (by Emil Ferris) #myfavoritethingismonsters. She threw this together for me in just a few minutes!
Looks like I need to start a new category in my hashtags, for bouquets of flowers from my girlfriends 💐 absolutely gorgeous roses from Afarin. I would love to identify the actual type of rose because these are so fluffy and delicate, they make me think of the chapter “Meg goes to Vanity Fair” in Little Women (probably one of my favourite chapters when I was a child, I spent a lot of time drawing the dresses and outfits described therein and very little worrying about Meg’s morals… same goes for Alcott’s less famous but strong favourite “An Old-Fashioned Girl”). #rosielovesroses #rosieloveslesfleurs
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • The Making Connections Project
  • Projects
  • Press and Publications
Blog at WordPress.com.
    • Rosie H. Cook
    • Customize
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Copy shortlink
    • Report this content
    • Manage subscriptions
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: