Cycle Lace

‘Cycle Lace’ is a product of wrapping silk, ripped into strips from a sleeping bag liner, repeatedly around bicycle wheels and driven over the harsh Icelandic landscape. Sewn back together again, each section of the silk textile acts as a record of the rhythm and repeated pounding of tyres against the terrain. The silk is a carrier of an interaction with a landscape, as the movement of a textile created in one-landscape travels to other terrains. Installed in a small gallery in Central London in 2015 the small network of spaces within the silk provide vignettes to the new location in which the work is installed. The piece emerges from my interest in reconfiguring textile methods and processes in the exploration of the way people are connected to place and their surrounding environment. As stated in Selvedge: “Working with traditional craft skills in a fine art environment, the work of Claire Barber has an uncanny likeness to well-known textile techniques – embroidery, lace ect.. and yet its alien forms come from seemingly unrelated processes.” https://www.selvedge.org/blogs/selvedge/cycle-lace