“Currents of breath and wind see her fabrics stir and pictures glitch, casting their own hypnotic spell that draws us into the threshold where magic lies.”

— Alice Godwin

Ruth Gilmour’s artistic practice is intrinsically tied to the material and sensorial resonance of silk, and its relationship with the body and natural world. Unravelling the conceptual threads of silk in her research-based process, Gilmour teases at the marvellous potentials of her material for healing and transformation. Silk is a collaborator for Gilmour, one that possesses a sensuous ability to both absorb and repel, to contain and expose. Gilmour responds to these reciprocal qualities within her art, rooted in an understanding of materials as not simply being lifeless and passive, but vital and able to enact influence upon their surroundings.

In the ebb and flow of silk’s porous boundaries, Gilmour explores a liminal space in which ideas, memories, and multiple versions of the self can exist. Abstract and often surreal images—photographed and printed onto silk—allude to the partial figure, the surface of organic materials, and the rhythms of nature. Hints of melting ice, growing seeds, tumbling leaves, bursting clouds, and other natural processes materialise in her textiles, saturating silk with the possibilities for metamorphosis. The gossamer silk, in itself, is a veil to be lifted between visible and invisible worlds.

Never is this whisper of the transcendental more apparent than in the sensorial effects of Gilmour’s work. Currents of breath and wind see her fabrics stir and pictures glitch, casting their own hypnotic spell that draws us into the threshold where magic lies. Equally, shifts in light, from changes in season and times of day, cast their own atmospheres. The trembling movement of these abstract images echoes the frayed edges of silk and speaks to the frontier between the mind and body, conscious and subconscious, pain and relief—to the “dis-ease” of sickness. The results tempt us over these frontiers, revealing surfaces that are as texturally captivating as they are visually beautiful.

Significantly, Gilmour’s interest in silk was spurred by early experiments with metal and porcelain, and the harsh, unforgiving results of their use upon her own body, which is prone to excessive, over-active responses. Silk is, by comparison, known for its biocompatibility—used to engineer sutures and grafts, and to regenerate skin and bone. In an artistic context, this remarkable quality permits an intimacy between the human and non-human, and fosters a charged “transcorporeal” exchange.

The domestic tradition of textiles and their habitual role in everyday (and historically female) lives play no small part in Gilmour’s work, which is anchored to an intimate studio, currently in north Zealand, Denmark. Foraged from the surrounding landscape, plants have become another essential collaborator for Gilmour. Just as objects and materials and bodies can influence one another, Gilmour allows the borders of her environment and her art to be permeated by nature. 

Medicinal herbs and flowers are gathered from the land—rosemary, chamomile, poppies, and yarrow are simmered in traditional dye baths, and petals are hammered onto surfaces to spill their colours and imbue silk with abstract grounds. As nature floods the studio and her art, Gilmour explores the shared histories and applications of silk and plants in conceptual and material terms, just as the two entities are also brought together in the making of paper.

Both silk and plants have long-held associations with medicinal treatment and care, with ritual and enchantment. These materials are a framework through which Gilmour tussles with the residue of her own embodied experience. Such personal experiences are the raw material of Gilmour’s practice that slides between memory, fiction, and desire. The slick surface absorbs these happenings, and allows the artist to process and theorize her experiences. The repeated acts of stitching, folding and wrapping also take on a meditative purpose, absorbing different experiences of time, and the slippage between the past, present, and imagined future. Knowledge is distilled into a vital, universal framework within the fabrics. Gilmour also binds objects—handcrafted and readymade—in silk, echoing the transformation of both the silkworm and the cocooning of her own body as she embraces its powers of physical, emotional, and spiritual healing.

Gilmour’s art brings to light the experience of the marginalized body—perhaps made invisible through the effects of illness or disability. Her work shimmers with these queer experiences, which lie beyond the framework of the “normative” body. Amidst her silk threads, multiple viewpoints can be contained; the boundaries between human and non-human, flesh and textile, body and mind can erode. 

The shrouds between these entities shudder; they are both the protectors and heralds of the artist’s embodied experience. Her image is made into an object, and her human flaws and fears are laid bare, just as the quiet enchantment of silk is made manifest. At the same time, the diaphanous veil of silk gives way to a spiritual and mystical experience beyond the tangible world. We return to the essential idea that materials are far from passive objects, but capable of receiving sensations and returning their touch.