Part framing studio, part gallery space, Detail in Tollcross hosts the work of sixty-five artists in their current Summer Salon. Among the sixty-five is South London-based artist Fiona White.
White’s recent musical embroidery series, Sad Songs features ten postcards embroidered with iconic yet melancholic song lyrics, such as the Smith’s There is a Light opening line, ‘Take me out Tonight.’ The postcard on display in Detail’s Summer Salon features the lyric “Killing me softly”, written in elegant cursive on scratchy Belfast linen. The series pairs iconic words from sad pop songs with a prim doily-esque aesthetic. White tells me she has “chosen to stitch these pieces in reference to the domestic craft of the eighteenth century sampler, often created by ordinary women to record their lives.” In this series, the recognisability of the lyrics references how pervasive pop music is within our memory. White notes how “every pop song is so much more than the words alone.” In this sense the postcards reference the practice of documenting everyday life in unexpected ways, as only a short sequence of words can provoke memories of people, places, and experiences gone by. As well as the fact that pop songs work not just as signifiers of individual memory but of collective experience, and the pieces immortalise the communal joy of music- “I love that when you ‘read’ the work, you almost sing it too.”
White’s work often references the collective and the public. Her Municipal Flower Bed series grew from White creating hundreds of drawings of “public spaces everywhere,” and turning them into small rectangle prints showing small details of larger shrubberies. White draws close attention to specific details of public gardens, pale yellow florets against teal skies, as “when you spotlight the smallest detail, it often tells a much bigger picture.” Public flower beds and green spaces are rarely prioritised and often suffer under council budget cuts. It is possible they are taken for granted, as White notes that though they are a “ubiquitous part of our landscape” they are “often hidden in plain sight”- “It is this notion of the unseen that interests me.”
Finally, I ask for some advice for student artists when they graduate: “stay close to other artists … it can feel very daunting to go it alone.” White also cites Daniel Eatock’s manifesto for artists- “To me, it beautifully sums up what it is to be a creative thinker. I think everyone should have a copy stuck to their studio wall.”
Detail Gallery’s Summer Salon ends on the 28th of September. Follow Fiona on Instagram @fionaxwhite, or visit fionawhite.co.uk.
Image provided by Fiona White
