I Cannot be Killed by Conventional Weapons, 2026

I am pleased with how this came out. It was a huge undertaking, both logistically and because I had never made a carpet or used a tufting gun before. Gladly the latter cam easily to me. Indeed I enjoyed it a lot and feel excited about developing this as a medium I work in moving forwards.

As is shown in my previous blog posts, I refined the design and the turned it into a vector ready to project onto the monks cloth background of my rug. I had built a large frame and installed it at my new studio in Sherwood ready for the task. I was chuffed that I managed to source an ethical supplier for my wool; using wool remnants from a commercial carpet maker up North. After receiving it all, I wound it into cakes which make for a much smoother tufting process. This is quite meditative, and I rewound most of the wool while listening and dancing to techno in preparation for upcoming bookings I have later this year.

Next was the tufting, which was fun but very labour intensive; it really hammered my arthritis and I need to bare this in mind for future projects. The whole tufting/ gluing/ glue drying process took much longer than anticipated. And the whole thing was a huge learning curve. And I was very glad of my new studio throughout because without having access to my own large space 24/7 I never would have completed this project on time. The main hiccup was the cold temperatures, which made it hard to do anything and meant the glue took ages to dry, and my tufting gun being problematic; it was a cheap second hand one, and kept on freezing up and requiring loads of fiddly maintenance, which also added extra time to the process. I have saved up and bought a new better model for my next project, which will be over double the size.

I wasn't sure about my use of black as an outline initially. My test pieces had all juxtaposed the baby pink with electric blue and I was really pleased with that combination. But I only had enough black to do the outline for this project, so stuck with it. Interestingly, the whole thing really came together when I added the off white for the pants. This somehow pulled it all together, balancing out the harshness of the black. 

Whatever challenges I met, it was all worth it because the piece came out fantastically well. It's a pleasing object, bot nice to touch and look at. The forced perspective of the legs, compounded by their wobble, creates a surreal quality. It implies reality wobbling. It implies being wasted. It implies her flowing down the wall like a river. It works as a sculptural object in space, being site specific and leaning against the wall and then splaying out on the floor as it does. It has just enough detail to imbue to figure with personality and an aura of sexy ennui. They look fed up but liberated. Her figure is just right, being an honest representation of a mature female body rather than stick of a thing designed for the male gaze. She does not meet your eye, but you can feel her awareness of you still. She is direct, uncompromising, dejected but not tapped out. She makes me want to sit in my pants more. I talk to her often. I have become fond of her and will miss her when she goes to exhibition in Leicester later this month.

And the time and effort I poured into it's construction is clear in the professional and high quality of the rugs finish. I don't often feel this positively about a piece, but I am genuinely chuffed with this rug and am chomping at the bit to make more.

I prepped the middle room as a mini gallery space and curated my recent works there. They sat surprisingly well together which was pleasing. 

I took it to the Fisher Gate Point gallery to see how it would work in the space. Despite it being 6ft, it disappeared in the main lower gallery. This was a worthwhile exercise because it has informed the scale of my next piece, the large rug I am making for my FMP.

I visited the gallery again the week after, to test the scale of my next piece using the projector.