Reversible TIRED Hat by Billie M. Vigne

Cotton elastane jeans, cotton pyjamas, beer cans, cotton thread

Artist statement: This hat is part of a series of hand-sewn clothes that have a relationship with the bed, made from textiles reclaimed from my life, imbued with haptic and sentimental memories.

Having to make trips into the outside world when I am not well enough can often leave me feeling naked and vulnerable, like a peeled lychee, flayed in the daylight. The bed is my main, most familiar dwelling space. These clothes are transitionary garments, to provide a bed-like shell to wear outside the house, made by my hands for my body. The sensibilities of a lifetime of bed culture to be taken out into the world in disguise.

The ‘Tired’ across the brow is made from aluminium drinks cans and is sewn onto a removable strip so the hat can be worn with or without the declaration. I began embossing as a way of continuing working with metal when illness meant I couldn’t get to my metalsmithing workshop.

Billie is an artist and metalsmith and has lived with ME/CFS for 23 years.

The Mind of Bill Bones by Billie M. Vigne

Chip shop paper, sugar paper, masking tape, acrylic paint, charcoal, ink, glue and fire

Artist statement: Between Apr-July 2021, I slowly grew The Mind of Bill Bones, a drawing that filled the wall behind my bed whilst confined to the bedroom for months due to illness. Unable to get to the sea and the chalk scrawled concrete promenades, where I wanted to be, I felt a desperate need to draw on a cliff of my own.

So I moved my bed away from the wall and masking-taped up layers of chip shop paper providing the largest canvas I could. Over three months I lived with it adding to it in an unpremeditated way, in moments between lying down, as my body allowed. The marks, much bigger than using a sketchbook, became an embodied therapy for the profound frustrations of an ongoing dissonance between what my mind wants to make and what my body is capable of.

It records the experience of a multitude of confinements; corporeal, cognitive, spatial, temporal, emotional and social. As diary, it documented my whole phenomenological experience during that time; the house I live in, and my interwoven connection with the other tenants, symptoms, feelings, dreams, note taking, processing technical readings and recording visual tropes.

See more of Billie's work at www.billiemvigne.co.uk or on Instagram at @billiemvigne

Reversible TIRED Hat by Billie M. Vigne

Cotton elastane jeans, cotton pyjamas, beer cans, cotton thread

Artist statement: This hat is part of a series of hand-sewn clothes that have a relationship with the bed, made from textiles reclaimed from my life, imbued with haptic and sentimental memories.

Having to make trips into the outside world when I am not well enough can often leave me feeling naked and vulnerable, like a peeled lychee, flayed in the daylight. The bed is my main, most familiar dwelling space. These clothes are transitionary garments, to provide a bed-like shell to wear outside the house, made by my hands for my body. The sensibilities of a lifetime of bed culture to be taken out into the world in disguise.

The ‘Tired’ across the brow is made from aluminium drinks cans and is sewn onto a removable strip so the hat can be worn with or without the declaration. I began embossing as a way of continuing working with metal when illness meant I couldn’t get to my metalsmithing workshop.

Billie is an artist and metalsmith and has lived with ME/CFS for 23 years.

The Mind of Bill Bones by Billie M. Vigne

Chip shop paper, sugar paper, masking tape, acrylic paint, charcoal, ink, glue and fire

Artist statement: Between Apr-July 2021, I slowly grew The Mind of Bill Bones, a drawing that filled the wall behind my bed whilst confined to the bedroom for months due to illness. Unable to get to the sea and the chalk scrawled concrete promenades, where I wanted to be, I felt a desperate need to draw on a cliff of my own.

So I moved my bed away from the wall and masking-taped up layers of chip shop paper providing the largest canvas I could. Over three months I lived with it adding to it in an unpremeditated way, in moments between lying down, as my body allowed. The marks, much bigger than using a sketchbook, became an embodied therapy for the profound frustrations of an ongoing dissonance between what my mind wants to make and what my body is capable of.

It records the experience of a multitude of confinements; corporeal, cognitive, spatial, temporal, emotional and social. As diary, it documented my whole phenomenological experience during that time; the house I live in, and my interwoven connection with the other tenants, symptoms, feelings, dreams, note taking, processing technical readings and recording visual tropes.

See more of Billie's work at www.billiemvigne.co.uk or on Instagram at @billiemvigne