Comissioned by Beacon as a response to The Manor Farmhouse at Helpringham, The Signature Quilt consisted of a temporary installation and a A1 printed publication consisting of image and text. It took as its subject the equivocal and shifting nature of ideas of home and community. Based around the image of a late 19th century signature quilt from Northern Ireland, an installation and text explore different inflections of how this kind of community might relate to the present.

The two-part text interweaves an account of the history of the quilt with a history of the gradual, sporadic, and sometimes projected migration of the artist: from rural Northern Ireland through Manchester, New York, Newcastle and London.

BEACON is a commissioning and exhibiting project that aims to establish new art and new artists in rural environments. Providing an opportunity for the residents of, and visitors to, Lincolnshire to see normally inaccessible heritage sites through innovative visual art activity in an area not well served by such art activity. Sense of place: place of sense was the theme for the 2005 BEACON project, a series of artworks were commissioned for heritage sites in Lincolnshire. Major Beacon commissions were awarded in the same year to Phyllida Barlow, Gerard Williams, Doug Fishbone, Simon Faithfull and Roxy Walsh

The Text and image from The signature quilt have subsequently been re-published in TOWARDS UNDERSTANDING COMMUNITY, People and Places, Edited by Christopher J.Clay, Mary Madden and Laura Potts, published by Palgrave Macmillan 2007 ISBN 9780 230 54264 8

Publication design by Jaako Tuomivaara
ISBN 1-860502 02 4

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/2936