Bonnington Centre

This Friday, May 24th, there’s a special weaving event at the Bonnington Café!

Loomeweight is an interdisciplinary durational performance piece created by Patricia Auchterlonie and Hester Dart of Bonnington Square. The project revolves around the creation of an Iron Age style warp-weighted loom, made from a simple wooden frame and hung with found hagstones (rocks with a single hole worn by the sea).

The loom provides a framework for the creation of a tapestry that is woven from ‘trash’ or rejected and broken items (eg plastic bags, rope, discarded clothing). While working, traditional weaving songs are passed between two voices, undergoing microchanges as the project unfolds. These improvised changes will involve very gradual shifts in rhythm, melody, and microtonality, as well as experimental vocalisations and other non-sung materials.

The installation is designed to be a marathon piece which slows down the making process while utilising pre-industrial, slow techniques and focuses on micro-changes and irregularities. Through this slow endurance, loomeweight critiques and questions mass production within late stage capitalism. It also references directly the historical gesture of singing and weaving as a paired pursuit, and explores the close relationship between these practises and folk culture / ancient histories.  The project highlights the failures inherent in a system which promotes marketability and consumption over the sustainable processes of creating and community building. There is also exploration of the omnipresent theme of ecological collapse through the re-use of thrown away objects.​

Hester and Patricia will be performing and touring the piece around the UK during the summer. They are currently confirmed for the Nozstock Festival in July. If you’d like to hear and see them at your own festivals, please get in touch!!