BA2 CLASS READING - TEXTILES IN SOCIETY -THE SUBVERSIVE STITCH GROUP SEMINAR PRESENTATION - this reading is extracts (...) from the set text. 

INTRODUCTION TO THE SUBVERSIVE STITCH: EMBROIDERY AND THE MAKING OF THE FEMINIINE. (1984) REPUBLISHED 2010.

At first sight embroidery practice is much as it was when 'The Subversive Stitch' was first published, twenty-five years ago. There continues to be a huge diversity of practice under the heading of embroidery. Men and women stitch as craft, as art, as professionals and as gifted amateurs. Moreover, 1984 and 2010 have something in common: financial recession. Then I observed a revival of enthusiasm for embroidery as a 'homecraft' with the call for the homemade, the hand-made and the natural. Now the same hold true. The London College of Fashion in August 2009 reported that bookings for sewing classes had increased by almost a third in twelve months.


Yet there are detectable changes in embroidery practice. For a start, the context of the book has altered significantly. Today there is no longer a thriving political movement of women. I wrote the book under the impetus of Second Wave feminism. By righting the neglect of women artists and questioning the downgrading of art forms associated with women - like embroidery - feminist art and craft historians revisioned many of the premises underlying the writing of Art History. Theory and history came alive for us and gathered new meanings. Passion and vibrancy characterised the work of both artists and academics. I feel fortunate to have been part of those times.


Shortly after the publication of 'The Subversive Stitch', a backlash against feminism set in. ... Typically, anti-feminism focussed on the bodies and beings of feminists. It was trumpeted that the fight for equality led to hair loss, worry lines, cellulite and above all infertility. A magazine feature was typically titled 'The Quiet Pain of Infertility; for the success orientated it's a bitter pill' while an ad for face cream inquired 'Is your face paying the price for success?' ... Where embroidery was concerned, feminists of the time were described as rejecting and spurning women's traditional crafts and skills. The ambivalence we experienced in relation to embroidery - our understanding of the medium as both an instrument of oppression and an important source of creative satisfaction - was repeatedly misrepresented as blanket condemnation. Apparently we 'dumped' women's domestic art skills. The Feminist was represented as stitch-hating, sad, ugly and drastically devoid of humour.


Feminism survived - in part by foregrounding a humorous face. Today a feminist magazine on the internet is, for example, satirically titled 'The F-Word', while exhibitions containing embroidery with feminist connotations are titled, for example, 'Not Your Grandmother's Doily'.


But what of other issues raised in the book? I identified the historical hierarchical division of the arts into fine arts and craft as a major force in the marginalisation of women's work. The movement to break down boundaries between different forms of creative expression, which gathered pace in the nineteen seventies, has undoubtedly intensified. Some working in the crafts today refer to themselves as 'craftists'. 'Craft' magazine declared in 2008, 'We now take for granted the cross-pollination of arts and crafts.' And, in recent years, a number of exhibitions have displayed work by artists employing stitchery. ...


Seventies artists employed embroidery as a medium with a heritage in women's hands, and thus as more appropriate than male-associated paint for making feminist statements. ...


Feminist artists were part of a thriving political movement, whereas today's embroiderers, most notably Tracey Emin, are working in a very different time. I'd like to be able to claim Emin as the daughter of seventies feminism - the daughter we would have wanted. But it's not that simple. She is the complex product of the confluence of her personal history with celebrity culture, and of the evolution of art practice under the impact of nineteen-seventies feminism. ...


Like nineteen-seventies feminists, Emin employs traditional sampler technique with the incorporation of words. Her most famous stitched work was the embroidered tent, 'Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995', in which she sewed onto the tent walls all the people's names, including her grandmother and her teddy bear. ...


On her website Emin describes herself as producing 'autobiographical art' with the following statement: 'Her confessional subjects include abortion, rape self-neglect, and promiscuity expressed with the help of gloriously old-fashioned looking, hand-sewn applique letters. Her dad quite likes sewing, because it reminds him of him mum.' ...


Second Wave feminists wanted an end to the inhibition and shame that limited women's lives - exemplified by the bowed head of the embroiderer. We wanted women to be free to express a broad spectrum of affects and ways of being without the fear of being shamed. While nineteen-seventies feminists asserted the power of female sexuality, Tracey Emin exhibited it. She achieved a glorious shamelessness with her taboo-breaking embroidery. (Parker in Hemmings, 2012, pp.297-300).

REFERENCE

Parker, R. in Hemmings, J. (ed.) (2012) The textile reader. London: Berg.