Hillard, Ainsley RPS

Posted in: Artists

AINSLEY HILLARD

1978

United Kingdom

FOLDS. 2010. Installation of Jacquard weaves, embossed prints, and ceramic

Ainsley Hillard is interested in bringing together the past and the present and her art practice is generally site-referential, being informed by specific places and the memories they hold. The series of works Folds is Hillard’s response to a vacant outbuilding that was once the ‘dry laundry’ at Newton House, Llandeilo, Wales. Most would consider such a room to be empty and devoid of human presence. Hillard, inspired by this forgotten room and the subtle imprints of past occupation further explored these clues to the daily rituals and tasks that occurred in this space.

It is difficult to imagine laundry work in the late-nineteenth century as compared to today. Newton House employed a Head Laundry Maid Florie Keziah Hannell (nee Keen) b. 1888 – 1985 whose written and audio interview is held within the archives of the National Trust. Florie remembered the ‘beautiful centuries old linen, crest woven fabrics, fine muslin skirts and embroidery’.

The ‘dry laundry’ was a separate feminine sphere and social space, where the labour was considered arduous and by no means pleasant, perhaps held a sense of purpose. In the repair and repetition, the making and unmaking, the folding and unfolding. These acts echo in the works by Hillard through the concepts of touch, cloth and memory. By mapping the absence, Hillard hoped to confirm the presence, re-tracing and merging the history of the laundry, the specifics of site and the meaning of materials.  An installation of half complete things – fragments of clothing, a table that floats without edge (we might anticipate its disappearance; instead, we witness a kind of emergence) – all things are dislocated: neither here nor there, but perhaps in the act of becoming.

This is no easy memorial, incomplete yet, somehow, full. Hillard offers a creative split between past and present. The gap in time, gifts us authorship, allows us to fill the gaps. In this absence, Hillard reminds us that history is always mutable.

(The above story ‘Folds’ developed from research undertaken at the National Trust archive by the artist Ainsley HIllard and the subsequent catalogue essay written by Angela Maddock. )

www.ainsleyhillard.com

 

 

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