Make-do and Mend – a familiar phrase associated with domestic craft – also recalls the British government’s Second World War campaign encouraging people to repair, reuse and repurpose textiles in response to wartime shortages. Born of necessity, the campaign anticipated contemporary approaches to sustainability and recycling. Susan Stockwell’s exhibition extends this meaning beyond the material act of mending to encompass the social and political histories embedded in objects and materials.
Make-do and Mend, Stockwell’s fourth solo exhibition at the gallery, brings together new works exploring the intersections of power, wealth and control with ecology, domesticity and politics of everyday life. She juxtaposes maps and paper money, bearing the authority of the state and the apparent objectivity of the cartographer, with worn textiles and garments that preserve traces of everyday life.
In Tineis Erosus, Stockwell embroiders moths across the holes of an old blanket inherited from her family. This year’s unusually early arrival of these insects prompted her to consider their sensitivity to environmental change and their capacity to predict the weather.