Artist Printmaker Catherine Cartwright

Dreadnought SW - Waymarker project for “Oxygen”, a new play by Natalie McGrath to celebrate the centenary of the The Great 1913 Suffrage Pilgrimage.

Our journey has begun. That is, the creation of the giant map showing the south west route taken by the women on the The Great 1913 Suffrage Pilgrimage from Lands End to Hyde Park. “Oxygen” will take a similar touring route 100 years to the day. The route is defined by the fingerknitted knots stitched onto the map. Each knot representing a step of the estimated 100,000 taken on the pilgrimage.

The map itself is scrim, and scrim is the traditional wiping fabric of the printmaker. As a printmaker I know that its open weave is for a consistent wiping of an intaglio plate. The scrim is important for this map because its open weave means that each venue or location is integral within the scenography, and its starchy stiffness ensures the map remains ‘map-like’.

More important than all of this symbolism are the women who are finger knitting the route. Artist Nicci Wonnacott and I are are leading waymarker projects with marginalised women affected by domestic abuse. We began in Exeter, with SAFE (Stop Abuse for Everyone) and we will be in Cornwall with WRASAC (Women’s Rape & Sexual Abuse Centre) and to Bath SEEDs (Survivors Empowering and Education Domestic Abuse Services). Integral to the story of “Oxygen” is raising questions about the Great Pilgrimage’s contemporary relevance. The Great Pilgrimage of 1913 was conceived as a mass mobilisation to urge Prime Minister Asquith to hear the Suffragists concerns, the reasons why women should have the vote and a voice. It worked and the rally in Hyde Park 26th July 1913 resulted in a deputation to Prime Minister Asquith.

The Waymarker projects are an opportunity to question whether women’s lives have changed for the better or worse since 1913, and to raise awareness of how powerful womens’ voices and action can be. 

Exciting News this week is that Beau Beausoleil, founder of the Al Mutanabbi Street Coalition is coming to Exeter - more details to follow.

The Al Mutanabbi Street Book Arts exhibition has reached the San Francisco Center for the Book. Happy to see ‘The Pile of Bricks’ in its fallen format included.

Dreadnought South West http://dreadnoughtsouthwest.org.uk/ are touring the play OXYGEN written by the talented Natalie McGrath.

Myself and Nicci Wonnacott are the lead artists for a Waymarker project that’ll see us working across three south west counties with women in marginalised circumstances. We are creating together a giant map of the The 1913 Great Pilgrimage route to form an integral part of the scenography for this touring play. We are using fingerknitting to represent the steps of the journey.. we estimate about 900,000 steps were taken by the women who walked from Lands End to Hyde Park. We plan 900,000 fingerknitted stitches to form the map.

It is a very exciting project to be part of. Keep an eye on it! 

International Womens Day 2013 (8th March) in Exeter was great to be a part of. Nicci Wonnacott and I ran an Activists Workshop at Exeter Phoenix and we were joined by women and men making badges, placards as well as joining in with the peaceful action of fingerknitting, to represent the many steps taken on the road of human rights and gender equality. The march in Exeter attracted a great turn out and the banners from our 2009 project Sewing for Peace accompanied the other banners from many other organisations including Fawcett Devon and Devon Rape Crisis. The event at Exeter Corn Exchange organised by Devon United Women was brilliant - really friendly, amazing international food, and beautiful music and singing. 

I had the pleasure of running a Book Forms and Stamps workshop in March for the John Rylands Library, Manchester - linking to the Al Mutanabbi Street Starts Here exhibition of artist books. Here’s some of the books they made in the 2 hour workshop - the hidden book form and  a simple accordian, filled with images created through making rubber and foam stamps, and text from a range of wooden letter type. It was a privilege to be able to talk about the Al Mutanabbi Street Starts Here project.

Making an animation in a day can be a challenge - back in February Josh Gaunt and I staged ‘Meet the Animators’ at the Thelma Hulbert Gallery in Honiton, and relished the opportunity to create an animation in a day. We created a diptych called ‘Playing with my Shadow’ seen here https://vimeo.com/60268744

These images are the negatives from some of the 50 or so monotype drawings that made the running boys sequence. Both screens were made up of both a drypoint plate to form the static environment which was partnered with a moving monoprint or monotype sequence. Josh is a great collaborator, see more of his work at https://vimeo.com/syndromepictures/videos

Al Mutanabbi Street Starts Here - an exhibition of artists books at The John Rylands Library, Manchester - made by artists around the world responding to the bombing of the booksellers quarter in Baghdad in March 2007. Its on until July. Its a project I’m proud to be a part of. It is touring to many venues including the The Center for Book Arts, New York City and The Cambridge Arts Council, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

I can highly recommend the Al Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Anthology, and today we received news that it has been selected for the Northern California Book Award’s NCBR Recoginiton Award. Available from http://www.pmpress.org/content/article.php/BeauBeausoleil

Bostons Tea Party, a cafe in Exeter, has a great hall-sized space upstairs. Myself and Anna Sabin have an exhibition there for the next month, showing new work from us both. 

Good excuse for a cuppa and a sit down I’d say.