The Seamstress and the Sea


 

 

This compelling installation was inspired by the life experiences of Rozannes grandmother, Alice Hunter, an outworker for one of the naval tailors in Portsmouth, and also the seamstress to whom the title refers. Modified and expanded with each showing, the installation typifies the slow gestation of much of Rozannes work. Evolving from a commission for the 2003 touring show Sample in the UK and Netherlands, soon afterwards in 2004, the work was included in a group show Of Sea and Stars,at Mission Gallery, Swansea, then Portsmouth City Museum and in its final form in 2006, on board HMS Belfast.

It recounts a sailors life through her piecework on hundreds of collars, and subtly draws on realities of naval life at that time, such as the suture patterns a surgeon would have used to close wounds. The results chart the passage of time and the arc of a sailors life, from the making of his collar to his shroud, and final resting place deep in the ocean. Assembled before the onlooker they form a quiet altar, a contemporary relic, a contemplative shrine to the perils of life at sea, and a celebration of the invisible seamstresses and the sailors who were buried anonymously at sea in the garments they made.