Denise Jones

Still, Stille

I made this piece of work very quickly, the day after I returned from Herxheim.

I called it Stille, a German word which means stillness, quietness, silence.
I made it in response to seeing my degree work hung again on a different wall, in a wider space and with its interpretation lost to some degree in translation.

I feel more protective towards this work each time it is hung. It seems to evoke a reaction from the viewer, not always positive! This time I thought the work looked still, like something had stopped in motion, like a photograph capturing a moment that had passed. All my engagement physically and mentally, was stilled once it was finished.
I realised that I was returning to those ideas when I made the small piece last week. I subconsciously used the colour of black and white photography too. I named it only when it was finished, as it was not until that moment that I knew what it was about. My needle at the moment of completion, became silent.

In a more lighthearted way, I am juxtaposing photographs and cloth on some cards for Ramster, an exhibition in March. I’m having a lot of fun with these! The photographs are from the 1920’s and of a relative who was a ‘New Woman’!
They are ‘stills’ of her friends and fellow ‘artists’!

Finally, I went to The Foundling Museum recently and was deeply moved by the fragile human stories about the foundlings and their parents, revealed in cloth and love tokens.
I took a photograph of the Foundling clock.
The photograph of course, stopped the time the moment I took it.