PLACING THE SKIN BACK ON TOP: IN CONVERSATION WITH ABIGAIL NORRIS

I am a maker at heart, and I found myself increasingly dissatisfied with the demands of being a digital filmmaker. I began to feel anxious about quality and about the work disappearing through a glitch, a power cut, or technological failure. I found a better way of earning money through textile design that wasn’t as demanding and didn’t involve such a heavy financial outlay; it also freed up my time. That space allowed me to return to physical making.

In retrospect, it was almost an accident that I fell into sculpture. I think I was searching for a particular sensation: the way encountering a large dead animal can reduce the viewer to the size of a child. Sculpture felt like the only way I could approach that experience. You only really understand these shifts after the fact.

Different works demand different approaches. Sometimes forms emerge in my hands through the combining of materials, or through picking up pre-made bones around the studio, like Ode to a Cello. I’m drawn to certain materials and feel an urge to make something out of them. Other times, a thought comes into my mind that I can’t step around. If the idea is large-scale, or likely to take a long time, then there has to be a fair amount of planning, research, and organisation.

I see reconstruction as a way of touching on deep intimacy, body to body. This can be read literally or metaphorically. We absorb such levels of violence and atrocity in our everyday lives through media that this act of reconstruction almost feels like a ‘bursting out’ of that pain, but in a gentle, nurturing way. There is also a profound disconnect between humans and other species within this cosmos. When stitching reclaimed hide or fur, I become acutely aware that I am piercing someone’s skin, and I feel connected to the story that led that pelt or hide into my hands. I believe we are living in an era where repair and care are among the most anti-capitalist statements I can personally make.

The presence of former histories within clothing, accessories, and domestic materials is essential. They bring a sense of spirit to the work, traces of time, and a fusion of life and death that cannot be fabricated.

I feel a huge sense of responsibility with Cow and Hare; something strange and real happened for me while making these works. There is something profoundly affecting about making every bone of an animal’s body, stitching ligaments and muscles, and then placing the skin back on top. I have a deep connection with them that still surprises me each time they come out of storage.

My most recent beast, Cat, is different. It does not hold the ‘spirit’ of an animal in the same way. This absence allowed me to explore notions of cruelty; something I could not have approached with Cow or Hare because of the responsibility I carry with them.

I see myth as a kind of ‘spirit of being’, something that comes into existence under its own steam. You cannot create myth. I approach my work by tapping into something that wants to come into being. If I have an ‘idea’ rather than something that genuinely ‘comes to mind’, my hands will not comply. I have to be patient and wait for thoughts that sit comfortably within my whole body. This feels close to a medieval model of being, where the mind is understood as part of a collective of organs. For me, it’s about learning to listen to your whole self.

Within the curatorial text for Obtuse, the statements ‘where a form begins to tilt beyond its own balance’ and ‘a choreography of inclinations, a space that never quite settles, becoming a singlegesture composed of many partial ones…’ resonated deeply with me. This shifting, uncertain, unknown, and yet familiar, place is where my work naturally rests.

It is a space where objects become subjects, shifting between states while existing in relation to one another. Scale is considered in terms of how the viewer stands in relation to these subjects; they may feel small or large depending on which bottle they have drunk from!

I had children at a very early age, which profoundly shaped how I experienced the world. While many people were exploring themselves in relation to the wider world, my life became bound to the domestic space. I learned early on to value the intense labour required to raise children, and to respect the materials of domestic life. This kind of work is rarely valued within society, and I feel compelled to give it a voice.

From my perspective, it takes enormous strength to survive the societal pressures placed upon mothers and women. From another angle, I find it intriguing that at this later stage of my life, I am stitching and binding bodies together just as my own body has reached the end of its ability to bear children. I love this possible coincidence.

I’ve recently begun working with linseed oil, powdered pigment, and wooden panels to create imagery. This has opened up a new form of expression for me, and I’m excited to see where it leads. I have an upcoming solo show at Julian Page Projects in Chichester, which brings together my large animal works as an installation alongside paintings that explore an interior landscape connected to it. As mentioned earlier, I have to wait for something to come to mind. I’ve had a visitation in the form of an image, but now I need to see how I physically respond to it over the coming weeks.