Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
By: Cas Holmes
Transitions at Bilston Craft Gallery highlights and explores the challenges makers face at a mid point in their career. I am one of 5 artists from different backgrounds selected to develop new works as well as show existing works. The idea is to explore issues faced by artists in developing new work. and continuing to be creative.
I like to use discarded items, waste material no longer considered useful. Fragments and layers mark the passing of time, the rituals of making (cutting paper, gathering materials, machining, sewing) acting as part of the narrative of the work.
As well as exhibiting and working to commission, I continue to be involved in education and community arts. I teach textiles and visual arts at Adult Education and for schools and groups.
By combining the advantages of new technology with textile and paper based work I seek to push the boundaries between tradition and innovation and extend further my visual vocabulary.
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Cas Holmes, 'Traces Installation', Paper, textiles mixed media, 2007. Photo: Cas Holmes. Traces Installation at Rochester Cathedral to be exhibited at Transitions
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Cas Holmes, 'Traces Installation', Paper, textiles mixed media, 2007. Photo: Cas Holmes. Traces Installation detail
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Cas Holmes, 'Folding Book Woodblock', Paper, textiles mixed media, 2007. Photo: Cas Holmes. Book made from street waste from the main bazaar, Delhi
# 1 [4 February 2008]
A research trip to India supported by Arts Council, allowed me the time to start exploring new avenues for my work. I was immersed in exotic images, colours and landscape totally alien to my upbringing and experience, yet in my childhood I remember similar colours in the surroundings of my grandmother’s home and objects collected. Transitions offer me the time to examine my response and to make connections between my current practice and this evolvement, exploring the cultural links between the North Indian art and decoration and those of my own Romany heritage within a broader cultural context.
I continue to remain deeply interested in environmental implications. Impressive physical changes to the land from building, farming, flooding, the normal cycle of the weather raises issues about our fragile relationship with the local and global environment. I often found myself picking up useful items from the rubbish in the streets, odd bits of fabric, an old label and often sat down to exchange stitch ideas and look at woodblocks being used to paint henna on women’s hand and feet.
New works seek to make a link between that experience and my own interest through the use of colour, pattern and image. Found materials gathered in India are combined with donated waste silks, fabric and paper from UK, and have been re-assembled into large wall hangings, more intimate textile canvases and objects. An installation of stitched translucent panels offers space for contemplation and reflection.Challenges faced as a maker in mid-career
The demands of maintaining a living often means my teaching role and developing my own work remain a fine balance. Whilst I enjoy the challenges of working in the public sector this often impacts on the time I have to spend on my own work. Having ‘established’ myself as an artist, at times, I feel my practice almost becomes ‘typecast’. People come to me to work on projects based on what they ‘know’ of me as an educator and artist rather than taking risks with developing new approaches. I constantly fight to find the space and time do realise my own creative ambitions within a very broad professional practice.
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