01: Freddie Robins: Softness is Power

Hand of Good, Hand of God, domestic machine knitted and seamed, Freddie Robins, 1997

It's an absolute pleasure to welcome to our first podcast, the artist Freddie Robins. Robins uses juxtapositions between how knitting is and could be seen, unravelling preconceptions of femininity, motherhood, death and the body, and twists the soft into evil and back again, imbuing a sense of power in using metaphor in knitting. As Catherine Dormer, artist, has said, "Robins offers a challenge to the notion of knitting as a passive, benign activity."

"You can feel the human interaction with the materials."

"People collect things they see value in."

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 Notes and references in the episode

00:02:21 & 00:07:59 - Donna Wilson's Tormented Textiles Talk ~ Read more and hear the audio ~ https://www.donnawilson.com/2018/10/08/tormented-textiles

Freddie mentioned the Crafts Magazine Power List and how it contained no one specific person on the list who worked and made textiles, only those that talked about it or designed it.

Textiles makers not present but there is writing about textiles. Grayson Perry uses his hands to make his clay objects but with textiles he designs it digitally, essentially he does not "think through the medium".

00:11:50 - Clothworkers Centre ~ https://www.vam.ac.uk/info/the-clothworkers-centre-for-the-study-and-conservation-of-textiles-and-fashion

Not public facing, V&A Textiles spread throughout the V&A - one day a dedicated department like ceramics has would be incredible for the specialism.

00:14:15 - Louise Bourgeois and Georgia O'Keefe ~ Briefly mentioned

00:17:32 - Kiki Smith and Sonia Delaunay ~ Briefly mentioned

How a staple gun in a tapestry, squint, begs the question of whether that would have happened to a canvas?

00:22:04 - Anni Albers ~ Exhibition currently on at the Tate Modern, London

00:30:50 - Hand of Good, Hand of God, Freddie Robins, 1997, http://www.freddierobins.com/blog/hand-of-good-hand-of-god

Pictured above. Robins used the constraints of the domestic knitting machine to make the largest glove she could and pushed the possibilities of the machine by adding smaller ones on the end of each finger.

00:36:40 - Someone else’s dream, Freddie Robins, 2014-16, http://www.freddierobins.com/blog/what-do-i-need-to-do-to-make-it-ok

00:41:16 - Anyway, Freddie Robins, 2002, http://www.freddierobins.com/blog/anyway

Not everyone knew it was knitted, in a way there was no trapping within the construction.

01:00:30 - Who's scared of the soft stuff?, Freddie Robins, Paper presented at RCA Cross College Symposium, Feminisms and Materialisms. PDF of Jean's notes of quotations available here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1xJ61T8wQV5PcNRA4CcFNYT3oeWLjZxNX

01:05:20 & 01:11:20 - Forearmed and Forewarned, Freddie Robins, 2002, http://www.freddierobins.com/blog/forearmed-and-forewarned

01:15:20 - Tarzan, Knitting Pattern, Patricia Roberts, circa 1980s

01:17:20 - Lisa Anne Auerbach, http://lisaanneauerbach.com/knit/

Jumpers that talk back - an art book was made that contained patterns for the jumpers. It was not found in knitting shops but rather in fancy art shops.