Teleidoscope
Rubbings

The templates to make the Teleidoscope Rubbings I, II & III were created from the remaining doily-like forms of paper cut drawings that were inspired by the Teleidoscopes. A series of rubbings were created using the skeleton forms that were produced as a result of the editing process. They conceptualize the narrative accounts given by the participants in a material form. The rubbings exist as a trace that bears witness to a history of a particular place and the narratives that the history embodies.

Oral history produces evidential material in the present about the past through subjective experiences. An employee remembered his grandfather being covered in graphite dust when he returned home from work at Perry Street Mill. This insight into how they lubricated the machines in a bygone era demonstrates how elements of personal memory and the social world are intertwined. The grey, shimmering, powdery images produced by the rubbings refract the machines and the environment of Perry Street Mill. The metallic circular shapes and smudges evoke movement and the passing of time.

Teleidoscope Rubbing II (detail)
Spider tissue 9 gsm, graphite
54 cm diameter (image size)

Teleidoscope Rubbings I & III
Spider tissue 9 gsm, graphite
54 cm diameter (image size) 97 x 732 cm (paper size)

The ‘spider tissue’ that was used as a substrate on which to make the rubbings gave an insight into the mass of the swathes of bobbinet tulle that not only occupy Perry Street Mill in abundance, but have reached out into the community throughout the history of its production. The swathes of spider tissue evoke memories of home mending, of needle and thread and how the bobbinet tulle industry crosses the boundary between home and Perry Street Mill. In this community the majority of women’s lives have been inextricably bound together with the bobbinet tulle in some shape or form.