A visceral addition to my work, the red stitching reflects an exploration of the body, within the body and about the body. Like red fingerprints they appear as print stains, reminiscent of blood and flesh, and like a fingerprint, they bear a maker’s mark – a feeling of ownership. I embroider red thread into oval shapes directly onto the surface of the work. The red mark acts as a possessive mark as well as a screen. They thread out a map or journey on the surface, creating a cloud of points. The red stitching also harks to branches, or a focal point, at once censoring and highlighting, hiding and revealing.
When I stitch onto photographs, it creates a temporal shift – the images themselves taking a fraction of a section to capture, the click of a button on a camera. The stitching itself is slow and laborious, and I find the juxtaposition of these two time frames a necessary device in order to introduce the many durations that are present in the act of making.