29/04/24: Today, I use materials close to home, such as my mum’s clothing. I feel hesitant to cut my mum’s clothing. There are items in her bag that I recognise from my childhood, now old and tattered, that she willingly gave me to use. There is so much memory and history held in these items that I will simply deconstruct; it’s saddening; however, this is an emotion I am willing to transmit. As Louise Bourgeois said, my feelings are too big for me, too intense. It is as if I am mourning my childhood through my mum and her clothing. The smell, the pattern, it all flashes back; these clothes are her skin. However, I wouldn’t feel this way if she had discarded these clothes. Something is happening to my making that I have not encountered.
Thinking back to my encounter with my clothes sourced from Bunnings, there was no initial reaction to the cut as they were pre-cut. The cloth had no form or context to listen to the item or understand its history and memory. Now, encountering whole pieces of clothing is eye-opening to repurposing clothing, the transfer of memory from one to the other until the item can no longer hold its potential. To then be discarded into a pile of similar capsules of memory.
I don’t want to make separate pieces of thread with these; I am urged to connect the material to one harmonious tribute to my mum, childhood, and memory. I must listen to the materials as Albers would do, let them breathe new life that will support my investigations.
Jeorja Duffy 