The Further the Distance, the Tighter the Knot
Mourning exists as a profoundly ritualised and circumscribed process; during the nineteenth century it culminated in a kind of performative practice concerned with the conspicuous display of grief, and its attendant customs. Martha McDonald’s recent performance/installation, The Further the Distance, the Tighter the Knot, draws upon the complexities of historical mourning practice in a work that explores the coexistence of the public, coordinated articulation of deep emotion alongside the genuine and private experience of such feeling. Incorporating elements constant to her oeuvre (song, flamboyant costuming, didactic monologue and autobiographical disclosure, knitted pieces and live demonstrations of knitting), the audience is invited on a tour of the physical, historical and psychological spaces of St Kilda’s Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts, in a work that is site-specific in the truest sense.
McDonald ornaments the exhibition spaces with tributes that recall its origins as a domestic setting steeped in mourning (the building was originally commissioned as a family home by German immigrant Moritz Michaelis in the mid-nineteenth century, and both he and his wife died there); knitted wreaths and forget-me-not sprigs soon give way to amorphous forms executed on a vast scale. Ushering viewers through the building, McDonald lectures on Linden’s history and that of its initial owners, divulges some of her own story as a recent arrival from the United States, and details aspects of Victorian mourning practice, punctuating these soliloquies with musical laments in the folk tradition. The inclusion of live knitting demonstrations serves as a deliberate analogue for the density of McDonald’s working method, as distinct narrative threads are woven together, personal and collective memories and desires all coalesce in an attempt to restore presence in the face of