Filament science and Nora Fok

New Threads' is running at the Inverness Museum from 14 March to 15 April, commissioned by the Harley Gallery, represents a selection from the last six years of British jeweller Nora Fok's intricate textile wearables. Fok's work examines the interaction between art and science and falls somewhere between jewellery, sculpture, art, craft and textile, making it clear that such distinctions are at best artificial!

Snowflake series 2012-13

Mathematics and the three dimensional structures that underlie life’s natural forms are the starting points for these new series. The three themes are: 'Exploring Flax', which led Fok to develop a new thread combining nylon and flax; 'Magic of Nature', showing the latest pieces resulting from Nora’s continuing fascination with natural forms and nylon threads; and 'New Forms, New Technologies', in which she uses 3D printing to create sculptural forms strongly influenced by the mathematical/structural philosophy of Buckminster Fuller.

Fok says, 'The processes that I use - weaving, knitting, crocheting and knotting - turn the linear nylon into simple and complex structures, which are inspired by my fascination with the natural world and the mathematical models that underpin it.'

Knot talk 2013

There is a range of work - from linen and seed pods in organic arrangements to the high-tech plastic and nylon 3-D printed and intricately looped, almost 'space-age' neckpieces. This is a very contemporary use of textile and sculpture that has a fragile, if somewhat artificial, beauty. For example the Snowflake neckpieces, a series of intricately looped circlets in clear nylon, demonstrates incredible craft and patience. The Noughts and Crosses series (2014-15), hard plastic circlets incised with negative spaces is very clever. Yet I found the regularity of these patterns and the inflexible nature of the material failed to evoke an emotional response. The woven linen circlets and neckpieces hung with seed pods have an African tribal feel. Some appear tactile and interesting. Perhaps they need to be moving while worn on someone's body to acquire a sense of life and movement. Under glass they seem a little static. 

The piece 'Knot Talk', a body hanging of textile with knots, based on the quipu counting system used by the ancient South American Cloud People, is interesting. Fok writes of it, 'I let the knots do all the talking. The Cloud People had their way of recording personal events and information, just as we use mobile phone and the web.'

Geodesic home 2015

Hybrid 2013-15

 












I was more drawn to sculptural pieces like this organic one, and like the plastic and nylon 'Geodesic Home'. One of the most successful pieces I felt was 'Hybrid', which takes as its inspiration the Ebola virus and a pollen grain and creates a weird and intriging shape that appears almost alive. Perhaps Fok is at her best when she does not limit herself to circular neckpieces, but is able to be spatially more free?