The Croft Cosy Project, Shetland 1992-1995

Activity: Talk / Presentation / Podcast / Webinar › Oral presentation

Description

The subject of this talk is The Croft Cosy Project, a collaboration between artist Roxane Permar and Shetland knitter Wilma Johnson which began in 1992. The talk is based on an article which is pending publication. Looking back at The Croft Cosy Project shows how knitting’s status as a functional, everyday craft can make it a lightning rod for societal ideas about work, gender and communal identity. This is particularly the case when knitting is repositioned away from the domestic realm, towards the public sphere or that of fine art.Many artists have used vernacular, functional textile elements for exactly this reason: eg Miriam Shapiro’s quilting; Faith Ringgold’s ‘story quilts’; Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party; or those positioning their work as ‘Craftivism’ (Greer 2014). However, when The Croft Cosy Project in Shetland in the early 1990s, such issues were ‘live' enough to bring the project to a halt while simultaneously projecting it onto an international stage
Period18 Sept 2023
Event titleWoolly Thinking: Threads of Change
Event typeConference
LocationLerwick, United KingdomShow on map
Degree of RecognitionInternational

Keywords

  • Croft Cosy Project
  • Knitting
  • textiles
  • communal identity
  • everyday craft
  • work and craft

Related content

  • Research output

  • The Importance of Place

    Research output: Contribution to specialist publication or web blog › Blog article