A Lump of Something Wound About
(September 2024)
Ilam Campus Gallery

Curated by Grace Ryder.
With poetry by Cassie Ringland-Stewart.

A Lump of Something Wound About, presents a playful, provisional collection of loose parts – material remainders from the emergent practices that ground Zoe’s ongoing creative process. These embodied threads of thought wind and unwind around the core question of how practice is both nurtured and nurturing.

glooag (Manx) a lump of anything to serve as a core for winding a ball of yarn upon.

The ball of thread was going a windin on a glooag o’turf, i.e. a small lump of peat.

I bought a pound of yarn from a woman at the door – and, aw, the chaets tha ‘s in this won’ – when I was knittin it up I found a glooag in the middle as big as my fiss.

Lap the cindher in a birra paper and it’ll do fine for a glooag.

Loose parts*

a hole is to dig – all the is solid melts into air – bodge job – combine – fieldwalking – floor is lava – folly – glad rags – glimmer – glooag – lumpen – negative ease – on pain of ruin – out the gate – pass it on – see feelingly – semantic satiation – shilly-shally, dilly-dally – the world turned upside down again – thought concrete – will-o-the-wisp – wishy-washy – zigzag

Materials

Another forgotten potato, remembered – Bottle tops found while walking around the block – Brown paper flour sack – Burnt stump from our neighbour’s olive tree – Coffee grinds from the BP across the road – Concrete found while walking around the block – Cord spun from brown paper bags – Disintegrating bamboo stakes from various neighbourhood gardens – Found bucket – Glitter hand-cut from discarded food packaging – Gravel salvaged from an abandoned sandbag – Hessian sandbags – Nails salvaged from the old Dowse Art Museum decking – Netting made from cord plied from plastic bread bags – Old shopping list – Palings from our back fence – Parts of a broken step stool – Pegs the kids found while digging a hole under the washing line – Plant ties from last summer – Plastic fruit stickers – Potato sacks from the local fruit and vege co-op – Scraps cut from the neighbour’s old clothing – Wood shavings from a local carving studio – Worn out knees from my gardening jeans

Emergent practices

becoming with – borrowing – breathing – broadcasting – chitting – chatting – chopping – combining – dancing – digging – discarding – dispersing – feeding – fermenting – gathering – giving – gleaning – going slow – idling – holding – lending – listening – loosening – lying down – maintaining – making shift – mending – messing around – noticing – playing – plying – pottering – presencing – receiving – refusing – resting – returning – rotting – rummaging – salvaging – shedding – spelling – standing still – tending – waiting – wandering – watching – wondering – woolgathering

* Loose parts are ordinary, everyday materials that can be moved, carried, combined, redesigned, lined up, taken apart and put back together in multiple ways.

Much of what’s contained win the four walls of this exhibition space are remnants and discards. Items that were surplus to requirement, forgotten or littered nearby have been gleaned from their surroundings or offered as a gift from a neighbour. Transformed by plying, twisting, organising, enveloping, burning, rubbing, and rolling, some have been dramatically altered (see: netting and glitter) and others hardly at all (see: concrete). Most have been created with someone – a collaboration between neighbours, the staff at the BP over the road, the children of the neighbourhood, family members and friends – or at least with someone in mind. It’s the sum of many parts, that will probably continue their transformation beyond this place, some destined for composting, others for further manipulation and future exhibitions.

Accompanying the exhibition is a series of poems by Ōtepoti-based writer, Cassie Ringland-Stewart, whose writing, I think, is like an archeological brush, where each reading reveals a little bit more of the threads and ideas that have been circulating throughout.

A Lump of Something Wound About is about practice, how to nurture one and how practice nurtures us, if it even does at all. Significantly, this is all situated in the institution where Zoe and I both studied, and where we were introduced to practice, where we were encouraged to shape one, maintain one, and make something from it. As each of our practices morphs into new spheres, one waxes while the other wanes, this exhibition offers an approach to practice, one that is slow and methodical, both for and with someone. Alongside Cassie’s crafted words, we hope this exhibition encourages those who engage with it, mainly the students who craft and shape this institution, the opportunity to reflect on what and how they do it, for whom they do it for.

Grace Ryder