Artist's Notes: The Work of Holding Series

Some experiences resist resolution.

They cannot be untangled through understanding, softened through time, or neatly folded into a narrative of recovery. Instead, they remain present—returning in different forms and demanding to be carried.

The works in The Work of Holding emerged from a period of prolonged emotional strain in which uncertainty, grief, fear, anger, frustration and love existed simultaneously. Rather than seeking to resolve these emotions, the series acknowledges them as conditions that must sometimes be endured. The works are concerned not with release, but with the ongoing practice of holding what cannot yet be put down.

Constructed through a process of knitting, knotting, stitching and repeated manipulation, each work is physically demanding to create. Dense knitted forms are twisted into complex structures before being bound, reinforced and reworked through the addition of felted wool strands. The process requires persistence, patience and repeated negotiation with resistant materials. In this way, the labour of making becomes inseparable from the ideas the works explore.

The knot serves as both form and metaphor. It suggests tension, entanglement, burden and contradiction, while resisting any single interpretation. The works do not attempt to untangle difficult emotions. Instead, they give them physical presence. Love exists alongside resentment. Devotion alongside exhaustion. Hope alongside disappointment. The resulting forms embody emotional states that remain unresolved, yet continue to be carried.

Many of the works within this exhibition emerged before I consciously understood their meaning. Looking back, I recognise these knots as records of a process rather than illustrations of an idea. Through repetitive acts of making, they became places where difficult emotions could be held long enough to be borne. Not transformed into something simpler or more beautiful, but rendered manageable through attention, persistence and care.

Organic, irregular and deeply tactile, the works retain a sense of tension and movement. They suggest bodies, burdens, gestures and emotional landscapes without settling into fixed meanings. Together, they reflect an ongoing engagement with the complexities of love, responsibility, disappointment and endurance.

At its heart, The Work of Holding is not a series about healing. It is a series about carrying. It acknowledges that some experiences continue long after we wish they would, and that peace is not always found through resolution. Sometimes it is found through the quiet, repetitive work of making space for what remains.