Heather Joy Riggs: 2008

As an artist working with textiles my main concerns are manipulating clothing and materials and placing them in different contexts. This challenges and changes their perceived meanings.

I explore themes of perception, reality and focus on materials, which symbolise rites of passage through installation, photography, video and performance.

I am interested in the seductive nature of clothing and fabric and how it often plays a major part in the creation of our dreams and aspirations. The folds, play of light and detail can lead us to desire something we believe to be outside of the everyday. I am concerned with how the dreams we create often fail in reality in turn highlighting their fragile nature.

In my most recent work I have explored these concepts as I spent sixty hours painstakingly unpicking a six-meter length of silk; the amount needed for a basic wedding dress, which was then placed on to the gallery floor. The piece was installed for one week. I removed the final thread in situ, which highlighted that the piece was no longer bound together but had ben fully separated. The work was then exposed to the interaction of the audience in which it moved, folded and was dirtied lasting only for the duration of the exhibition.

Through video and photography I am able to capture the performative elements of my practice, which are crucial to my methodology.