back to list 
The Words  2008

St Catherine's Church, South London 


 
        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
        
                                                                                                                                                                                                           
        
                                                                                                                                                                                                           
   


The installation, The Words, was comprised of six texts, presented as embroidered samplers in decorative, ‘antique’ frames. The texts compliment existing ones from the early twentieth century, which have occupied spaces in the church from early 20th Century until the present times.

The wording of the samplers was taken from the words of people regarded as socially stigmatized: prostitutes, divorced women and a prisoner. Their ‘voices’, embroidered on samplers, represented an alternative to the official ‘Word of God’ when they were installed in the space of the church.

The church as an exhibition venue, was chosen as a site where orthodoxy and heterodoxy, the sacred and the profane, past and present, imagination and reality, and respected and neglected voices could meet. The artwork and the site reciprocally challenge and problematize each other.



Copyright © 2009 Young In Hong