As a Korean born adoptee to Australian parents, it is not inconceivable that Ahn Wells’ art strives to negotiate her identity. However it does so in an unexpected manner. Intrigued by home craft techniques, particularly crochet and her mother’s artisan abilities, Wells has consciously adopted her mother’s craft skill. Through this, her work centres on common notions of craft such as the repetitive and mediative experience of making and creating forms. Whilst she learns from an expert, and often shares the mediative processes, she consciously adds her own design. In doing so, she not only draws upon her own sense of identity which is an extension of being her mother’s daughter-- a sense of uniqueness and difference--but on universal notions of identity formation.
Materials such as industrial twine, fishing line or copper wire, are foreign to traditional home craft but Wells manages to juxtaposes these with a sense of domesticity and home. These materials aesthetically appeal to Wells and are used to achieve her desired forms. Fishing line appears delicate, but is actually strong. Copper wire is malleable enough for crochet but strong enough to hold a form.
dimensions variable
crocheted paper yarn
Tea for three, 2006 is a tea set crocheted out of paper yarn (a material used to make domestic floor boarding). Although the tea set is a recognisable domestic form, and there is a strong symbiosis between the repetitive domestic action of tea making and that of craft production, the functionality of the tea set is subverted by the materials and crochet technique used. All opacity and solidity is lost and the viewer is left to wonder what a tea set is when it is not capable of serving tea.
8 Ounces (2006)
dimensions variable
crocheted plastic string
Wells revisited this idea with 40 oversized crocheted teacups in 8 Ounces, 2006 which were designed in consultation with her mother. They merged intricate craftsmanship with mutating forms. The cups were installed deliberately to have the audience interact with the space around them. They were seemingly floating in space, so as to engage people in the odd, oversized forms and introduce the technique of crochet into the foreign environment of the gallery space.
detail, Cozy (2007)
dimensions variable
bricks, wool
In Cozy, 2007 crocheted tea cosies made of yarn (this time a more traditional crochet medium) envelope house bricks. This speaks of the dynamic between the warm domestic sense of a ‘home’ and solid permanence of a ‘house’. In fact, Wells inverts the relationship by protecting the house bricks with the domestic cosies, bringing the interior out and exploring the idea of making a house your home by modifying and personalising it.
detail, Untitled (pierced paper landscape), (2007)
50 cm x 80 cm
mixed media on stonehenge paper
Untitled (pierced paper landscape), 2007 was a painstaking process of piercing delicate holes into paper to create patterns and forms. For Wells, this reiterates the finer elements of creation, including the process, randomness of form, repetition, mark making and surface quality.
180cm x 35 cmcrocheted fishing line, wire and nails
In Identity Formation I, 2008 Wells has crocheted single strands of transparent fishing line. Within each strand she has interjected with a section of crocheted beading wire at a calculated point. Once the multiple strands are hung against the wall, the beading wire sections create a pattern and a unique rhythm can be visualised across the wall. For Wells, this represents the endless possibilities of form and randomness of identity formation as a whole
Laura Stedman
B. Art Theory (UNSW COFA)
June 2008