A collaboration between Victoria Robinson and Pamela Robinson, using wallpaper by Hannah Nunn.
The fragile nature of the paper pushed to and sometimes beyond its limits. Feeling that moment when the skin of the paper has taken too much. Tearing. No way back.
The beauty and delicate nature of Hannah’s designs belying the raw punch of each stitch. Over and over, the piercing punch of the machine. Tiny holes on repeat.
A noise I know. The spinning running of the sewing machine.
Stitching, running water, running stitch, the low historical echo of the loom.
Brought up in the Holme Valley of West Yorkshire the landscape of textile mills feels imbedded in me, sewn in, stitched deep.
How else to speak the unspeakable
but to make what I will try but fail to wear?
How else to speak the unspeakable
but to make what is ultimately a shell?
How else to speak the unspeakable
but to make what is impossible to move and breathe and dance in?
“Paper will not be made to do. We learnt this quickly. Paper has power. It says No.”
A collaboration with my mum Pamela Robinson. A tailoress. A pattern cutter. The person who has sewn for me since before I was born and still does. Helping me speak the unspeakable darkness of infertility.