Hannah Murray II

A giant pin cushion heart was another element of Hannah Murray's degree show at Aberdeen resulting from a chance discovery of sweetheart pincushions.

"Created during the First World War by soldiers recuperating in military hospitals, sweetheart pincushions were made primarily as a way of passing the time, but were also sent home as tokens to wives and sweethearts. The delicacy of their creation belies the fact that they are made by soldiers, the tiny, intimate stitching and intricate bead work a stark and sobering contrast to the  sheer brutality  of  war. (see example below)

Charged with a poignancy by the circumstances of their giving, unlike anything which I have held onto, the impact they have goes beyond that of the receiver, touching to those coming across them generations later. Many were made out of scraps of fabrics and material, others from kits made up for military hospitals; all were sent as tokens, reminders of love. They embody the intimacy - the delicacy - which can be found in human relationships and which I hope, through my artwork, to further explore." Hannah Murray

Hannah Murray

Hannah Murray's work has a nostalgia for tradition and the overlooked and neglected familiarity of cultural customs.

I have attempted to convey the intimacy and deep embedded nature of many customs by creating richly dense grounds, overlaying it with suggestions of familiar imagery: horse shoes and coins for luck, bells foretelling a wedding and thimbles for spinsterhood. The objects themselves are inoffensive, with the use of repetitive imagery, such as that of the figureless dress being key to promoting a sense of familiar. In the simplicity of such objects, however, lies the thread that makes up the fragile structure of human bonds and the unyielding nature of age old customs - both religious and secular - which we cling to. Hannah Murray