Erin M Riley’s hand-woven tapestries re-contextualise online pornography (NSFW)

Erin M Riley’s woven artworks take screenshots of online pornography captured at the moment of climax and turns them into wonderfully intricate, contemporary tapestries. Year of Porn first started as a way for Erin to pass the time: “I would watch porn on my phone regularly to fall asleep. Often the next day I’d go to look for something online and the browser was still up. My inclination was always to hide it, feeling shame or embarrassment despite most people relating or not being phased if they did see,” explains Erin. “ I started screenshotting the moment of climax when I watched porn on my phone and just filing it away on my camera roll.” 

After a year of collecting these moments, Erin lost all of them after an iPhone update in 2012. “Once I lost them I realised that they’d be a good series to weave so I started collecting again naturally and backing them up.” In the past Erin’s woven works have captured self-documentation through selfies, but here it’s her own behaviour the artist is recording, which in turn shines a light on society as a whole. “Part of today’s culture of watching porn is the internet/computer/smartphone experience. The ritual of finding the right video, queuing it up, waiting for it to load, the ads in the periphery become foreplay for masturbation. I first experienced porn via magazines but my true habit is with the video interface and searching online,” she says. 

Erin has incorporated aspects from the online players she uses to watch the film – such as the play button, rating bar and time stamp – as a reminder of how the erotic material is consumed. Her candid tapestries give the pornography an odd warmth and coziness rarely associated with erotica but the artist sees some parallels between weaving and video. “Weaving works within a pixel-like framework has some similarities. Overall it becomes simplified and more low-tech digital with hand-dyed wool yarn.” 

Erin is known for her large scale works and Year of Porn follows suit, and combines them with smaller artworks. “Making them large forces the viewers to face porn explicitly. Amassing a collection of little ones displays a habit or lifestyle,” she says. Erin’s erotic tapestries sees the artist taking the “activities that society has told me are shameful” and standing by them. Year of Porn is a projects that supports women in their search of self-pleasure and fun and acts as a prompt for honest conversation about sex, masturbation, porn.