Acts of Care
Since 2013 ‘Acts of Care’ has become a continuously growing artwork; a single project with iterations created around the UK. In many ways, Acts of Care is the anchor of my artistic practice.
It considers what it means to make something by hand that takes ‘care’ as its core, to not only make the ‘thing’ but to make the tools to make the thing, to spend months and sometimes years immersed in the techniques, the materials and the stories of a place.
Acts of Care is a national project involving a series of permanent public interventions, exhibitions and public workshops, combining towards a comprehensive artist almanack of traditional crafts and regionality.
Within this ongoing project, Brothwell researches the production history of each location, learns local craft skills and develops a set of unique tools and processes for each repair intervention. The tools are each designed for the specific task and become a unique record of the process of making the work. The ability to create and use tools has value beyond the utilitarian. Acts of Care works with industrial craftspeople of the UK, learning and showcasing their histories and skills, proposing a new value system.
As a series, the crafted repairs within the public realm utilising the traditional craft heritage of each location; Acts of Care, made with knowledge and research of skills of historical and modern local workers, creates an alternative mapping of the UK.
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I wrote this most un-manifesto-y manifesto to explore the source of this work. My hands know the centre of the work all this time, but the following essay is the first time I’ve explored it with text.
Acts of Care: A Manifesto
My hands are in their pockets as I use my tools.
My hands flow, picking up their lines of movement before dipping wildly off course, externalising parts of myself, before we join together again, smooth and in step. A chronocyclegraph animated to a daily dance; I become bolder each day as my invisible partners and I hold each other.
The hands working behind me are ever present. My hands are non compliant shadows, slowly gaining ground into permanence.
Part of this connection between us is that the materials are so elemental, so ancient, that the ties are unmistakable. Human—material—human like a silk thread; highly prized to those of us close enough to see the glistening in the sunlight.
I am a custodian of the skills of many generations, so are you.
I hold the knowledge that has been hard won; the firm and respectful movement of metals into tools and forms, but the importance isn’t in the past. The importance is in the capabilities for the future. Acts of care and repair, weaving ourselves into the world.
Looking after the public and the private in equal measure, as they are equally us.
The tools I use are a muddle of mine and theirs. Mine, bought or handmade by me to enact some specific function that no-one else has seen fit to make a tool for, or that no-one else has seen.
Theirs, a love letter to the people I have met. An assortment of gifts, hand-me-downs and finds that leave me entranced, turning and peeking into all corners for clues about their lives. Ceremoniously they are brought together into the actions of the workshop.
Common objects, interpreted and adapted as a language rolling and changing, passing between us.
Daily the ritual must be completed to put the tools to bed; brush down to remove swarf, dust and filings onto floor, wipe threads, faces and plates, oil moving parts, wipe down handles, oil faces then wrap in cloth, note any housekeeping and set aside, put away into families or leave out, wrapped, for tomorrow.
Thankyou for holding me
-Text originally commissioned for “Women Making Contemporary Sculpture” Yellowfields