Étoile - [French] Star. Toile - [French] Cloth

É-toile was created by Amy Chen in collaboration with Ángela Hoyos Gómez. The four art pieces depict different astronomical phenomenons and aims to bring the audience closer to these distant and grand astronomical events.

Materials and knit structures were used to show the different densities and scales of objects in space: fine lurex knitted with multiple ends of black yarn to portray distance star-scapes, and slub yarn to create foreground stars of varying sizes. In reference to ‘Star*ts’ and starts, the laddering and floats of yarn at the bottom of the fabric depict the process of creation, loose and open yarn structure progressively becoming more dense moving up the fabric.

The colour choices in the fabric design mirrors the process of creating space photography. Space photography starts in black and white, which is then colorised. The colours don’t necessarily represent the visible light spectrum but show different gases in different colours, which can be useful for scientific analysis.

The knit pattern is designed as a black and white image, read by the knitting machine as needle selections. Colour is added through the blending of yarns. In É-toile, the key colours were chosen to represent Julieta Fierro, Catherine Walsh and Teresa Paneque, three women in astronomy whose voices can be heard in Star*ts. In this way, the unseen is made visible.

-- Amy Chen
achentextiles.com

Étoile, 2023
Four knitted artworks. Acrylic, Wool and Lurex yarns. Knitted on a modified domestic knitting machine.

Star*ts | Cultures of Sound

Weekdays 10:00-15:00
Saturday 11:00-16:00

Drop in during café opening hours or by appointment to meet the artist or have a curator tour

Bath House Galleries . University of Huddersfield . Queensgate . Huddersfield . HD1 3DH