Like Trying To Get the Sticky Bits Off You, But They Keep Sticking
Solo exhibition
Angear, Lakeside, Nottingham
2019
Solo exhibition
Angear, Lakeside, Nottingham
2019
Exhibition Text
Like Trying To Get the Sticky Bits Off You, But They Keep Sticking
Laura McCafferty’s practice is interdisciplinary combining large-scale textiles in brightly-coloured, boldly-patterned cotton, with steel construction, drawing and performance. Sitting on the edge of narrative, she wants her work to subtly mess with our expectations.
Often employing highly repetitive processes, for McCafferty the act of making itself assumes great importance. Whilst freely admitting the absurdity of her tasks she remains unashamed by the sheer joy invested in her labour: pleasure in repetition and triumph over adversity.
Starting with the observation of an object - a lemon-yellow and white-striped shopping bag, for example – or an obsession with a pale lilac, she allows the original impetus to seed and take root, and then to evolve and permutate into something equivalent but different and new. Cutting and sticking, chopping and piecing together, one thing leading to another, she describes her making process as both purposeful and futile.
List of works: L–R
Pagaent, 2018–2019, cotton cloth and cotton thread, 9.80 x 3.90m
Suck-Up, 2018-2019, cotton cloth, cotton thread, powder-coated stainless steel, 1.4 x 6.8m
Freeloader, 2016-2019, seventeen textile panels (each 1.12 x 1.56m), cotton cloth, cotton thread, powder-coated stainless steel, 1.7m x 1.7m
Shake it all about, 2019, cotton cloth, cotton thread, digitally printed cotton, sand, powder-coated stainless steel, 1 x 1.6m
Like Trying To Get the Sticky Bits Off You, But They Keep Sticking
Laura McCafferty’s practice is interdisciplinary combining large-scale textiles in brightly-coloured, boldly-patterned cotton, with steel construction, drawing and performance. Sitting on the edge of narrative, she wants her work to subtly mess with our expectations.
Often employing highly repetitive processes, for McCafferty the act of making itself assumes great importance. Whilst freely admitting the absurdity of her tasks she remains unashamed by the sheer joy invested in her labour: pleasure in repetition and triumph over adversity.
Starting with the observation of an object - a lemon-yellow and white-striped shopping bag, for example – or an obsession with a pale lilac, she allows the original impetus to seed and take root, and then to evolve and permutate into something equivalent but different and new. Cutting and sticking, chopping and piecing together, one thing leading to another, she describes her making process as both purposeful and futile.
List of works: L–R
Pagaent, 2018–2019, cotton cloth and cotton thread, 9.80 x 3.90m
Suck-Up, 2018-2019, cotton cloth, cotton thread, powder-coated stainless steel, 1.4 x 6.8m
Freeloader, 2016-2019, seventeen textile panels (each 1.12 x 1.56m), cotton cloth, cotton thread, powder-coated stainless steel, 1.7m x 1.7m
Shake it all about, 2019, cotton cloth, cotton thread, digitally printed cotton, sand, powder-coated stainless steel, 1 x 1.6m
Summer Lodge Residency
Nottingham Trent University
2019
Nottingham Trent University
2019
During the residency I worked in paper collage on the floor. Incorporating paper, photocopies, Ink drawings, photographs. The aim was to explore form, shape, pattern and colour. First cutting out shapes and laying them on the floor. Secondly, arranging the pieces on paper, sticking doe, then cutting into separate pages. The work is able to be arranged into various compositions, creating multiple outcomes.
