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CRITICAL REVIEW
All That Remains- Thirty Years In The Making
Neil Bottle recently had an epiphany – after 30 years working as a successful textile practitioner and later as Programme Director of Fashion Textiles at UCA he realized that he wanted, perhaps more importantly, needed to create something for himself. The resulting body of work is therefore a continuation of his digital and craft based practice but now underpinned by the emotional rollercoaster of familial narrative. This new direction has, in his words, taken a psychological as well as physical toll. Researching, developing and creating work for this exhibition has meant long hours sifting, selecting and sometimes discarding the boxes of objects which triggered childhood memories of people and places.
Photographs are the most ubiquitous objects found during the clearing of properties of loved ones. They are also the most emotive, conjuring up memories of special events – Christmas and birthdays, seaside holidays and ice cream treats. The discovery of the faded and sepia toned images transform the slips of photographic paper into inanimate objects of desire – triggering waves of nostalgia for an uncomplicated childhood overseen by loving parents or grandparents. The photograph appears to offer up a ‘truthful’ rendition of the past, one which reinforces our recollections of endless school holidays, dust motes floating in shafts of sunlight in a too warm front room and the scratch of upholstery on bare legs. ‘Do you remember’ becomes the mantra that accompanies the sorting through boxes of black and white and Polaroid images.
‘All That Remains’ is a curious title for a celebratory exposition that explores and interrogates both the digital and the personal, and I wanted to know more. It is almost ten years since Neil asked me to write about his work and much has happened in the decade that has passed. In my text for ‘TechnoCraft Collection’ I described him as ‘an alchemist, experimenting and mixing paint, print and dyes transforming the two dimensional into a world of pattern, texture and colour’. The alchemy is still there and I’m not surprised that he has added a sophisticated digital tool kit to his practice; an interrogation of process has always driven Neil to explore new ways of making. Whilst his work has always borne the hallmark of his experiences, his love of travel – ‘wanderlust’ is the word he frequently employs - the focus on a deeply personal narrative is unexpected. That this narrative is inextricably bound to the domestic environment also seems at odds with the taste for the exotic, and his frequent trips to India. Neil’s new studio is the physical manifestation of his duality – set within his new home overlooking a vast expanse of garden, it is a bricolage of carefully curated furniture and textiles from India, opaque blue and green sea glass and fragments of blue and white china beach-combed from the Kent coastline. Within this eclectic mix are added an assortment of family heirlooms, some I recognize as generically linked to my own childhood. ‘Heirlooms’ is perhaps a grandiose term used to describe the collection of objects which has inspired ‘All That Remains’, consisting as it does of random sets of keys, photographs, a child’s first attempt at stitching a doll in a gingham dress. I believe the latter is key to unlocking this new dimension to Neil’s work. He speaks eloquently of the stories his grandmother told him as he sat making the doll, an unusual occupation for a small boy. His frequent requests for the retelling of these homespun tales became as important as the repetitive action of pulling needle through fabric. As the self appointed custodian of these stories, involving gender, kinship and relationship to Broadstairs, the town where past generations have settled and made their home, Neil has added the new craft of storytelling to his oeuvre.
The American essayist, poet and philosopher Henry David Thoreau wrote ‘It is not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see’. In looking at Neil’s new body of work I am reminded of the work of the French artist, sculptor and photographer Christian Boltanski, who accumulated a large number of obituaries from a local Swiss newspaper, with accompanying photographs. ‘The Reserve of the Dead Swiss’ (1990) is a large-scale installation of forty-two framed photographic portraits of apparently unidentified men, women and children drawn from his macabre archive. Of this work Boltanski stated ‘We hate to see the dead, yet we love them, we appreciate them’.
Neil has encapsulated this appreciation in both text and textiles, passing on his own personal knowledge in a format which is readily absorbed into our collective consciousness. We are perhaps the last generation whose task it is to clear the homes of the departed with the accumulation of a lifetime’s material culture. The tangible memories encapsulated in the analogue as opposed to the digital, hundreds of images as opposed to thousands.
Neil talks admiringly of the work of the American artist Joseph Cornell who pioneered the art of assemblage. Cornell’s ‘shadow’ or ‘memory boxes’ contained found objects and collages assembled from old books. Many pay homage to the artist’s favourite actresses and ballerinas, and in 1965 he made a series of collages ‘Memorial Collection’ dedicated to his brother who died the same year. There are similarities to be found in both artists’ careers – Cornell had a textile background, first as a salesman for a textile company and subsequently as a textile designer. On a personal level, his work was often rooted in childhood experiences.
This long process of self-discovery has taken Neil on a new journey, this time his wanderlust has taken him in a surprising direction. He has travelled back through his past, adding the missing elements from his own memory library in order to complete his family narrative. He has embraced the role of artist, archaeologist, designer, maker and story teller – holding onto and passing on his knowledge through the medium he knows best, textiles.
Photographs are the most ubiquitous objects found during the clearing of properties of loved ones. They are also the most emotive, conjuring up memories of special events – Christmas and birthdays, seaside holidays and ice cream treats. The discovery of the faded and sepia toned images transform the slips of photographic paper into inanimate objects of desire – triggering waves of nostalgia for an uncomplicated childhood overseen by loving parents or grandparents. The photograph appears to offer up a ‘truthful’ rendition of the past, one which reinforces our recollections of endless school holidays, dust motes floating in shafts of sunlight in a too warm front room and the scratch of upholstery on bare legs. ‘Do you remember’ becomes the mantra that accompanies the sorting through boxes of black and white and Polaroid images.
‘All That Remains’ is a curious title for a celebratory exposition that explores and interrogates both the digital and the personal, and I wanted to know more. It is almost ten years since Neil asked me to write about his work and much has happened in the decade that has passed. In my text for ‘TechnoCraft Collection’ I described him as ‘an alchemist, experimenting and mixing paint, print and dyes transforming the two dimensional into a world of pattern, texture and colour’. The alchemy is still there and I’m not surprised that he has added a sophisticated digital tool kit to his practice; an interrogation of process has always driven Neil to explore new ways of making. Whilst his work has always borne the hallmark of his experiences, his love of travel – ‘wanderlust’ is the word he frequently employs - the focus on a deeply personal narrative is unexpected. That this narrative is inextricably bound to the domestic environment also seems at odds with the taste for the exotic, and his frequent trips to India. Neil’s new studio is the physical manifestation of his duality – set within his new home overlooking a vast expanse of garden, it is a bricolage of carefully curated furniture and textiles from India, opaque blue and green sea glass and fragments of blue and white china beach-combed from the Kent coastline. Within this eclectic mix are added an assortment of family heirlooms, some I recognize as generically linked to my own childhood. ‘Heirlooms’ is perhaps a grandiose term used to describe the collection of objects which has inspired ‘All That Remains’, consisting as it does of random sets of keys, photographs, a child’s first attempt at stitching a doll in a gingham dress. I believe the latter is key to unlocking this new dimension to Neil’s work. He speaks eloquently of the stories his grandmother told him as he sat making the doll, an unusual occupation for a small boy. His frequent requests for the retelling of these homespun tales became as important as the repetitive action of pulling needle through fabric. As the self appointed custodian of these stories, involving gender, kinship and relationship to Broadstairs, the town where past generations have settled and made their home, Neil has added the new craft of storytelling to his oeuvre.
The American essayist, poet and philosopher Henry David Thoreau wrote ‘It is not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see’. In looking at Neil’s new body of work I am reminded of the work of the French artist, sculptor and photographer Christian Boltanski, who accumulated a large number of obituaries from a local Swiss newspaper, with accompanying photographs. ‘The Reserve of the Dead Swiss’ (1990) is a large-scale installation of forty-two framed photographic portraits of apparently unidentified men, women and children drawn from his macabre archive. Of this work Boltanski stated ‘We hate to see the dead, yet we love them, we appreciate them’.
Neil has encapsulated this appreciation in both text and textiles, passing on his own personal knowledge in a format which is readily absorbed into our collective consciousness. We are perhaps the last generation whose task it is to clear the homes of the departed with the accumulation of a lifetime’s material culture. The tangible memories encapsulated in the analogue as opposed to the digital, hundreds of images as opposed to thousands.
Neil talks admiringly of the work of the American artist Joseph Cornell who pioneered the art of assemblage. Cornell’s ‘shadow’ or ‘memory boxes’ contained found objects and collages assembled from old books. Many pay homage to the artist’s favourite actresses and ballerinas, and in 1965 he made a series of collages ‘Memorial Collection’ dedicated to his brother who died the same year. There are similarities to be found in both artists’ careers – Cornell had a textile background, first as a salesman for a textile company and subsequently as a textile designer. On a personal level, his work was often rooted in childhood experiences.
This long process of self-discovery has taken Neil on a new journey, this time his wanderlust has taken him in a surprising direction. He has travelled back through his past, adding the missing elements from his own memory library in order to complete his family narrative. He has embraced the role of artist, archaeologist, designer, maker and story teller – holding onto and passing on his knowledge through the medium he knows best, textiles.
Sue Prichard, Senior Curator of Decorative Arts at Royal Museums Greenwich, London
August 2019
August 2019
EDITORIAL REVIEW
All That Remains – Thirty Years in the Making
Ruthin Craft Centre- 19th October 2019 – 19 January 2020
Opening on 19 October 2019, textile artist Neil Bottle’s solo exhibition: All That Remains – 30 years in the Making at Ruthin Craft Centre presents his new body of work, as he celebrates 30 years as a textile designer. Neil’s fascinating textile hangings in All That Remains are inspired by family photographs, a sense of time passing and how we remember things - in both real and false memories.
Much of his new work is about family photographs; an autobiographical collage of his memories. Neil’s recent house move unearthed photos of things he remembered, and things thought he remembered. He found himself living in his grandparents’ house in Broadstairs whilst renovating his new Margate home, and remembered being there as a child. His grandmother, in particular, is a star in these new textiles: ‘I was struck by one particular photograph, it’s such a beautiful photograph, from around 1939-40. She died in 2014 at 96, and we cleared all her things. She looks like a film star, so beautiful.’ Her poignant photograph, a small single object, becomes repeated digitally, enlarged - and part of other, newer, memories.
The textile prints will be contextualised with personal, sentimental objects that were the starting point for many of the stories Neil is telling here, including a tiny doll he made aged 3, that his mother kept in a box for many years. And a large collection of house keys from places Neil has lived, that no longer open anything. ‘I like the idea of objects that have history embedded in them,’ he says.
A year after graduating in Textiles and Fashion from Middlesex University in 1989, Neil won the New Designers Textile Prize, and he never looked back. For many years his scarves and ties, hangings and cushions sold to the best stores across the world: Liberty, Fortnum and Mason and Harrods in England, Holt Renfrew and Neiman Marcus in the USA, and Joyce in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, craft shops and galleries, though smaller outlets, crucially kept Neil’s work in the craft world, a place he returns to with this exhibition.
Neil moved gradually into teaching and now heads up the Department of Fashion Textiles at University for the Creative Arts in Rochester. This allows him freedom from the constraints of accessory production that he established his name with: ‘I wanted to concentrate on the one-off things I’d always loved doing.’ Neil separates his textile work into pre-digital, and post digital. He was one of the first designer-makers to start to work with computers as his main medium. After taking an MA in Digital Design, Neil began exploring the possibilities that working digitally opened up for him. His textiles are now all digitally printed, although he does go back to work on some pieces - adding screen printing and stitch in to them.
Neil has taken to Instagram to document his journey on All That Remains, and to upload 200 images from a 30-year archive of his work. From the tangible and analogue, housed in drawers in his new house in Margate, he is excited to turn his work loose on to the pixelated and ephemeral platform of social media. And to see how that changes things, once again.
Much of his new work is about family photographs; an autobiographical collage of his memories. Neil’s recent house move unearthed photos of things he remembered, and things thought he remembered. He found himself living in his grandparents’ house in Broadstairs whilst renovating his new Margate home, and remembered being there as a child. His grandmother, in particular, is a star in these new textiles: ‘I was struck by one particular photograph, it’s such a beautiful photograph, from around 1939-40. She died in 2014 at 96, and we cleared all her things. She looks like a film star, so beautiful.’ Her poignant photograph, a small single object, becomes repeated digitally, enlarged - and part of other, newer, memories.
The textile prints will be contextualised with personal, sentimental objects that were the starting point for many of the stories Neil is telling here, including a tiny doll he made aged 3, that his mother kept in a box for many years. And a large collection of house keys from places Neil has lived, that no longer open anything. ‘I like the idea of objects that have history embedded in them,’ he says.
A year after graduating in Textiles and Fashion from Middlesex University in 1989, Neil won the New Designers Textile Prize, and he never looked back. For many years his scarves and ties, hangings and cushions sold to the best stores across the world: Liberty, Fortnum and Mason and Harrods in England, Holt Renfrew and Neiman Marcus in the USA, and Joyce in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, craft shops and galleries, though smaller outlets, crucially kept Neil’s work in the craft world, a place he returns to with this exhibition.
Neil moved gradually into teaching and now heads up the Department of Fashion Textiles at University for the Creative Arts in Rochester. This allows him freedom from the constraints of accessory production that he established his name with: ‘I wanted to concentrate on the one-off things I’d always loved doing.’ Neil separates his textile work into pre-digital, and post digital. He was one of the first designer-makers to start to work with computers as his main medium. After taking an MA in Digital Design, Neil began exploring the possibilities that working digitally opened up for him. His textiles are now all digitally printed, although he does go back to work on some pieces - adding screen printing and stitch in to them.
Neil has taken to Instagram to document his journey on All That Remains, and to upload 200 images from a 30-year archive of his work. From the tangible and analogue, housed in drawers in his new house in Margate, he is excited to turn his work loose on to the pixelated and ephemeral platform of social media. And to see how that changes things, once again.
Jane Audas, freelance digital producer, writer and curator, 2019