Mirrie Lace: Fusing new technologies with traditional craft

Description

This panel, comprising knitters, textile designers and visual artists - Roxane Permar (Chair and presenter), and participants Barbara Ridland, Elizabeth Johnston and Gwen Abernethy - from the Shetland-wide project Mirrie Lace considered the project just over ten years after the ‘light up’ at Mareel in November 2012. It commenced with a presentation introducing the project which focussed on its primary themes: the fusion of new technologies with traditional craft, inter-generational participation, light as a dynamic and transformative medium for place-based community engagement and public art, and cultural engagement as a means to extend and inspire shared vision and creative experience. The presentation included examples of work the knitters have produced since 2012. Knitters shared their experience of taking part as well as the impact it had on their creative practices. Collectively members of the panel discussed ways the project influenced attitudes and practices not only for them personally but in a wider context.

Mirrie Lace was part of the large scale project Mirrie Dancers (2009-2012), a cross-generational community based project conceived by Roxane Permar and Nayan Kulkarni in response to a commission for permanent public art works using the medium of light for Mareel, the new Music, Education and Cinema Venue for Shetland Arts Development Agency. This panel focussed on the second part of the project, Mirrie Lace, which involved altogether 23 Shetland lace knitters 17 of whom developed unique hand knitted lace pieces for permanent interior light installations in Mareel.

The knitters experimented with different materials, taking part in six Lace Labs during 2009-2010 and producing just over 150 individual pieces in one year. The project culminated in 2012 with the installation of 17 permanent light installations at Mareel located throughout the building, appearing in timed sequences so that there is never any one time when all 17 are visible simultaneously. 

The lace knitters whose work is installed at Mareel include: Kathleen Anderson, Anne Eunson, Bab Fraser, Verinia Fraser, Catherine A Gibb, Janette Henry, Angela Irvine, Elizabeth Johnston, Joan Manson, Minnie Mouatt, Barbara Ridland, Helen Robertson, Jan Sawford, Christine Smith, Jessica Aitken, Zena Thompson, Gwen Williamson. Knitters who also took part in the project and exhibited in the exhibition at Bonhoga Gallery (2010) included Laura Friedlander, Ina Irvine and Wilma Johnson.

Period	19 Sept 2023
Event title	Woolly Thinking: Threads of Change
Event type	Conference
Location	Lerwick, United KingdomShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International