Mother of Pearl breaks loose from her moorings

'Mother of Pearl' re-stretched off the mattress....

Storing the mattresses is a fools game, it means you pay for space you can't use and the work gets sad being all squished and in the way. I feel that once the idea has been put out there and recorded then it can evolve, I liked the shape of this embroidery and in the original installation that was site specific it really worked on the mattress as its glowing sterility was part of the concept, but as a piece on its own I felt the white to be simply empty and defunct, So I decided to take them apart, there is still the mattress like rim around the edge and now I have some nice foam and a whole other side to use!


The Original piece:

There is alot of conflicting information regarding how to bring up children. Instincts are confused when reading information books, the language can be very extreme and it can inspire great fear. In the early times with a baby it can feel very life and death, there is this powerful feeling of nurturing, intimacy and protection, paralleled with great threat, ie cot death, the dangers of the 'family bed'. It is a very intense time, Mother of Pearl is an illustration of this, I even bought the mattress, because of this overwhelming urge to make it sterile for this brand new baby. The whiteness of everything, the saftey net and glass stalagmites give the sense of these invisible but very present forces.