Nicole Polonsky MISTAKES CONSISTENTLY THROUGHOUT 10 Nov - 14 Dec 2024 Opening event: Sunday 10 Nov 2pm - 4pm Dusty-Pink Woman’s Hand-Knitted Cardigan, a new soundpiece composed by A C Lovett, will premiere at the opening event. It will be performed at 2.30 pm and 3.30 pm on Sunday 10 November only.
Since (in theory) things outlast us, they know more about us than we do about them; they bear their experience of us within them and are …the book of our history lying open before us. – W. G. Sebald, A Place in the Country
Mistakes Consistently Throughout is a new body of work developed by Nicole Polonsky that explores latent meaning in an apparently unremarkable cardigan. The garment was knitted by hand for the artist by her mother, Beata H Polonsky(1928 – 1989), towards the end of her life. An artist herself – as well as an accomplished linguist, host and raconteuse – Beata experienced periods of mental ill-health. Mistakes Consistently Throughout draws on cross-disciplinary expertise and scholarship and is informed by a condition report on the cardigan that the artist commissioned from textile specialists at Zenzie Tinker Conservation. Akin to a psychological appraisal, the report offers insights and observations on the garment and, by extension, its maker. With its incorrect tension, dropped and laddered stitches and ‘mistakes consistently throughout’, the knitted artefact bears witness to Beata’s fluctuating states of mind.
Mistakes Consistently Throughout articulates literal and metaphorical readings emanating from the garment. Five brightly coloured screenprint collages by Nicole Polonsky depict some of the knitting errors that were identified in the cardigan. A vintage haberdashery case displays knit swatches by craft aficionado and author Geraldine Warner. In pink yarn dyed to match the original, they too reiterate the mistakes. Also on show are Nicole’s reinterpretation of the symbols Geraldine devised as a graphic representation, or ‘chart’, of each of her swatches. Composer A C Lovett transforms one of these charts into a musical score, with notes corresponding to individual stitches. Dusty Pink includes vocal parts by performer Frances M Lynch overlaid with the sound of knitting needles provided by Jane Trowell.
In Mistakes Consistently Throughout errors and flaws become worthy of study and display, and provide ample source material for creative responses. Nicole Polonsky posits that a hand-crafted garment with its vernacular knit-one-purl-one stitches is far from being a mute subject. Rather, the glitches and mistakes can be characterful testaments to their maker’s life and preoccupations. Here, in their conformity and unruliness, order and disorder, the cardigan’s stitches embody Beata H Polonsky’s frailty, persistence and creative spirit. The artist invites us to value them as evidence, in fibre, of a very human kind of fallibility and resilience. @moca_london www.nicolepolonsky.com @nicolepolonskyartist www.zenzietinker.co.uk www.aclovett.com www.francesmlynch.co.uk www.healingjusticeldn.org/team/jane-trowell
Image captions: Mistake #1 PL sleeve, mistake, wrong stitch – with repair (deep pink/deep blue) Screenprint collage on Fabriano Artistico 640gsm 760 x 560mm approx. Photo: Matthew Booth Photography Mistake #2 PL pocket cable, dropped stitches – with repair (light pink/light green) Screenprint collage on Fabriano Artistico 640gsm 760 x 560mm approx. Photo: Matthew Booth Photography
Mistake #3 back, mistake, dropped stitches picked up incorrectly leading to increase – with repair (orange/mauve) Screenprint collage on Fabriano Artistico 640gsm 760 x 560mm approx. Photo: Matthew Booth Photography
Mistake #4 PR back, knitting mistake, wrong stitches – with repair (turquoise/deep yellow) Screenprint collage on Fabriano Artistico 640gsm 760 x 560mm approx. Photo: Matthew Booth Photography
Mistake #5 PL band, laddering stitch, hole – with repair (deep green/brown) Screenprint collage on Fabriano Artistico 640gsm 760 x 560mm approx. Photo: Matthew Booth Photography
Biography Nicole Polonsky is an artist, curator and writer. She gained her BA at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, University of Oxford, and MA Print at the Royal College of Art. Exhibitions include lapse:re:lapse, MOCA London UK (solo); The Book as Art, DeKalb County Public Library, Georgia USA; A Pollock’s Gallimaufry, Pollock’s Toy Museum, London UK (co-curator and participant); ACE-funded LightingUp Time, Northern Print and Side Cinema, Newcastle UK (solo); The Contemporary Print, Flatbed Press and Gallery, Texas USA; Y not I, The House of St Barnabas, London UK (solo); Ghost[ed.], Dean Clough, Halifax UK and tour (co-curator and participant).
Nicole’s work is held in private collections internationally and public collections at Museum of Modern Art, Decatur Arts Alliance, Lafayette College (USA); MACBA Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (Catalonia/Spain); University of Oxford, Victoria and Albert Museum, Manchester Metropolitan University, Essex County Council, Chelsea College of Arts Library and the Poetry Library (UK). Her practice has been featured in a number of publications including Creative Review, Art Monthly and Printmaking Today, as well as Michael Petry’s The Word is Art (Thames & Hudson). She has written for art and design journals and contributed an essay to a monograph on artist Chila Kumari Singh Burman (Tate Publishing). Born in Switzerland, Nicole Polonsky now lives and works in the UK.