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June 24, 2024 In Textile Art

Learn woven sculpture with Harriet Goodall

Images of Harriet Goodall and her art work.

 

If you have ever been curious about basket weaving and wanted to find out more, then now is the time. Enrolments have recently opened for ‘Form to Freedom. Weaving for fibre sculpture with Harriet Goodall’ by Fibre Arts Take Two. Divided into 12 modules and 107 bite sized lessons, this engaging and rewarding course covers a lifetime of learning about basketry by Australian artist Harriet Goodall.

 

Harriet explains everything you need to know from start to finish. So many elements are covered including how to forage for materials and which materials to look for. You learn how to dry and soak your materials to be able to weave with them (without them going moldy). There are step-by-step videos on making your own cordage, how to create knotless netting and weave with wire. There are useful tips such as constructing a vessel with an open weave appearance that also has strength. What I found particularly helpful were the pdfs of materials. While foraging is explored in the course (including foraging for natural dyes in the dyeing plant fibres module) there is also a list of suppliers for those who prefer to have their fibres ready to weave with.

 

Set against the stunning backdrop of the Australian New South Wales countryside and Harriet’s studio, this course is a relaxing and informative journey you can dip in and out of whenever you are ready. Harriet points out numerous pitfalls to help you avoid them and lifetime access gives you plenty of time to practice. I’m in awe of Harriet’s amazing tension and have discovered finding the sweet spot between not too loose or not too tight comes with time.

 

While you can learn at your own pace there will be tutor interaction between 22nd July – 13th September where questions can be answered. This course works on many levels. If you’re a practicing artist looking to incorporate woven sculpture into your practice this will help you achieve it. It teaches basketry to beginners and for those who have previous knowledge it shares many tips and techniques. Whatever your reason for choosing this course, Harriet’s generosity of knowledge, skill and artistry make it one to look out for.

 

To discover more visit  https://www.fibreartstaketwo.com/courses

To see more of Harriet Goodwill’s woven sculpture visit https://harrietgoodall.com/

June 10, 2024 In Exhibitions, Textile Art

Daisy Collingridge at Thread Count exhibition

Unknown; Family portrait photographic print and Burt portrait by Daisy Collingridge.

 

 

It’s always a joy to visit textile exhibitions and Thread Count in East Anglia in the UK, is certainly worth a visit. As always there is a wide range of techniques and subject matter, and this exhibition also brings together artists from a range of educational backgrounds. Some are highly trained, others are self taught. Some use textiles exclusively within their practice others, for others it is just one aspect of their portfolio. 

Co-curated by artist and Professor of Textiles at the Royal College of Art Freddie Robins and The Art Station exhibiting artists include Rosie Edwards, Woo Jin Joo, Sophie Giller, Feifan Hu, Daisy Collingridge, Andrew Omoding, Jevan Watkins Jones, Freddie Robins, Peter Collingwood, Rebecca Riess, Mikey Cuddihy, Julie Cockburn, Abigail Lane, Srinivas Surti, Annabel Elgar, John Craske, Emily Cannell and William Wallace.

Part one is held from until 31st July and the second part which includes a new large-scale textile installation by Sophie Giller is on show from 6th until 21st of July.

It is open Wednesday – Sunday 12 – 4pm or by appointment. For more information visit https://theartstation.uk

 

 

May 20, 2024 In Art, Exhibitions, Textile Art

Frieda Toranzo Jaeger exhibition

 

 

Images from top:

If the future is full of death, the past is the only alternative source of inspiration to the traditions and memories of a zombified world, 2023; Open your heart because everything will change, 2023, images courtesy the artist and Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin and Bortolami, New York.

. A code that copies itself, 2020, image courtesy of the artist and Arcadia Missa, London.  Installation view at Modern Art Oxford, photo by Rob Harris. 

 

If you are near Oxford you have one more week to see Mexican artist Frieda Toranzo Jaeger’s first solo exhibition in the UK. Through paint and pre-Columbian embroidery techniques, her work reimagines the future covering themes such as tech billionaires involved in space race, colonial legacies, climate change, hyper-capitalist technologies and systems of control and power.

Her work ‘suggests alternative decolonised, queer futures, in which joy and chaos co-exist together as a means of resistance and critique.’ Heart motifs and verdant plants appear alongside driverless cars and space shuttles and as the exhibition title implies there is hope within the darkness.

Frieda Toranzo Jaeger: A future in the light of darkness at Modern Art Oxford Exhibition is on until 26 May 2024 at Modern Art Oxford

https://www.modernartoxford.org.uk/

May 13, 2024 In Textile Art, Uncategorized

Yvonne Pacanovsky Bobrowicz Exhibition

 

Images from Yvonne Pacanovsky Bobrowicz: The Cosmic Series at Sapar Contemporary in New York

Images courtesy of Sapar Contemporary and the artist

 

This stunning exhibition  features 16 of Yvonne’s luminous hand-knotted artworks . Born in 1928 Yvonne was an American artist brought up  by her father who was an emigrant from Slovakia and her mother who was from a family of German emigrants. Encouraged to go to art school she attended Cranbrook Academy of Art which pioneered design (Ray and Charles Eames met there.) Yvonne trained with Finnish weaver Marianne Strengell and later in Philadelphia with Anni Albers. Her career covered seven decades and discovering mono filament in the 1980s proved to be a turning point. Her Cosmic Series is a collection of sculptures using knotted and woven monofilament that consider the chaos, randomness and mathematical logic of the universe.

 

“I am concerned with expressing interconnections – interconnectedness and continuum. My work has been combining natural materials with synthetics, relating opposites, randomness and order – dark, light, reflective, opaque, illumination to dematerialization, exploring cosmic energy fields. I have been knotting clear monofilament, a man-made fiber that transmits light, combining it with natural linen, opaque and light absorbent, incorporating gold leaf, reflective and alchemically symbolic – unifying them in a variety of densities, scale, and configurations.”

 

 Yvonne passed away in 2022 and this exhibition is a chance that shouldn’t be missed to see her dynamic textile art.

Yvonne Pacanovsky Bobrowicz: The Cosmic Series at Sapar Contemporary at Sapar Contemporary until June 1st

For more information visit https://www.saparcontemporary.com/

April 29, 2024 In Art, Textile Art

Tapestry competition by Australian Tapestry Workshop

 

Images clockwise from top left by Misako Nakahira; Constanza del Pilar Guerrero Morales; Rachel Hine and David Pearce

 

Calling all tapestry weavers. It is time again for The Australian Tapestry Workshop’s bi-annual tapestry competition. Tapestry artists are invited world wide to submit small scale hand-woven tapestries up to 40 x 40 x 3cms. The judges are looking for ‘an expressive use of tapestry through materials, concept, colour and design.’

 

The Kate Derum award is for established weavers and has a prize of $5,000 and the Irene Davies Award is for early career weavers with $1000 prize. More importantly all those shortlisted will be exhibited at The Australian Tapestry Workshop and you can price them if you would like them to be for sale. To enter visit www.austapestry.com.au

 

 

April 11, 2024 In Uncategorized

El Anatsui Behind the Red Wall

          

 

My favourite time to visit an art gallery is when they open in the morning. There’s a serenity to the space and you often have the gallery to yourself, even if it is just for a few minutes. This happened when I went to see El Anatsui’s Hyundai commissioned installations in the gigantic Turnbine Hall at Tate Modern. 

Behind Red Moon features three artworks constructed from thousands of crushed bottle tops and metal fragments that are stitched together with copper wire. The metal canvases become huge sculptures as they descend, revealing landscapes symbolic of ‘the moon, the sail, the Earth and the wall.’ 

 

On closer inspection, fragments of words on the non-precious metal bottle tops reveal the human connection. The brightly coloured metal used commercially for practicality with seemingly little value is transformed into a beautiful, shimmering material. It also signifys the global industry built on colonial trade routes connecting Africa, Europe and the Americas. 

 

The most powerful aspect of the work for me was the size. Looking up at meters of handmade material glittering in the light felt like a spiritual experience. As the text accompanying the work states ‘Anatsui explores the entangled relationships and geographies that bind us together.” This was the first time I’ve seen El Anatsui’s work in real life and I can’t wait to see more. 

March 4, 2024 In Art, Textile Art

Textile Curator’s Contemporary Textile Art Exhibition

I’m thrilled that thirteen incredible textile artists are part of Textile Curator’s first Contemporary Fine Art Textiles Exhibition. Some artists are exhibiting more than one piece but this gives you a flavour of what to expect if you visit the exhibition. A wide range of techniques are featured including hand & machine stitch, textile sculpture, knit, weaving and quilting. Themes range from identity to pop culture, and climate change to self confidence. The artists are Caroline Burgess, Jen Cable, Jordan Cunliffe, Jenni Dutton, Sarah Geyer, Alicja Kowlowska, Deniz Kurdak, Melissa, Emerson, Lizzie Hill, Sara Impey, Lucy Newman Karen Nicole and Jane Walkley.

It is the only art gallery at The Stitch Festival at the Business Design Centre, Islington, London and runs from Thursday March 21st through to Sunday 24th March.

Check out www.stitchfestival.co.uk for opening times.

I hope you see you there!

February 15, 2024 In Exhibitions, Textile Art

Outi Pieski at Tatę St Ives

 

  

 

      

 

Images from the top Outi Pieski, Beavvit – Rising Together II, 2021; Portrait by Heikki Tuuli, Rástegáisa lágalaš riektesubjeaktan II Sacred Mountain Rástegáisa as a Legal Person I, 2018;  Photo Jussi Tiainen; Golleeana Land of Gold, 2013. © Ella Tommila EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art; Silbajohka Silver River, 2014. Photo Jussi Tiainen; Skabmavuoddu – Spell on Me!

 

 

There is no question that galleries are increasingly featuring fine artists who use textiles as their medium. You still have to seek it out though which makes it such a rewarding experience when you visit a textile exhibition. Tate St Ives has just opened Outi Pieski’s first large-scale exhibition in the UK. I haven’t seen Outi’s work before and to see it together in such a beautiful environment made it even more special. Her art is not only visually astounding but has so much to say.

 

Outi is an artist and an activist. Much of her work revolves around the environment and inhabitants of her homeland of Sapmi. This is an area in the Arctic Circle divided between Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia where the Indigenous Sami have lived for hundreds of years. Outi’s work explores issues including elements of Sami culture that have been lost, and highlights how developments, proposed or otherwise, impact the Sami homelands and Indigenous people’s rights.  

 

Acrylic landscape paintings have a mesmerising dream-like quality that is beautiful with an eerie undertone. They convey nature as a living, spiritual force and framing the canvases with hand knotted tassels used on traditional Sami shawls reminds you that people survive and thrive in these landscapes. Their culture, heritage and land need to be protected. 

 

What Outi calls ‘three dimensional pieces’ take centre stage. Outi’s largest installation has been shown around the world, and when you experience it you can see why. The bonus of this exhibition is a new piece created for the show during a residency at Tate St Ives, the colours of which hint at the Cornish environment.

 

With all of the conflict in the world, this burst of colour, the skill of the handmade and the uplifting ‘three dimensional pieces,’ left me feeling a little more optimistic. With artists like Outi PIeski, issues do not go unnoticed and bring awareness to those who are looking. 

 

Outi Pieski is exhibiting at Tate St Ives until 6th of May 2024. https://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-st-ives

https://www.outipieski.com/.   https://www.instagram.com/outipieski/

 

January 29, 2024 In Uncategorized

Jakkai Siributr exhibition

 

Exhibition view: Jakkai Siributr: Everybody Wanna Be Happy, CHAT (Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile), Hong Kong, 2023

 

If you are in Hong Kong you’ll be able to visit a retrospective of one of my favourite textile artists. Jakkai Siributr: Everybody Wanna Be Happy is currently exhibiting at the Centre for Heritage Arts & Textile.

Covering work from over two decades, it shows the diverse range of his work both aesthetically and conceptually. Tackling themes of Buddhism in his native Thailand, political issues, materialism and more recently the role of family, this exhibition gives pause for thought through exquisite pieces of textile art.

 

Jakkai Siributr: Everybody Wanna Be Happy is on show until 13th February 2024. To find out more visit https://www.mill6chat.org/

September 14, 2023 In Art

Inquiry about Forgotten Birds Collection

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last year I featured Iranian artist Tina Rouhandeh on Instagram and details of a piece from her forthcoming exhibition ‘Inquiry about Forgotten Birds.’ Tina is now based in Canada but she still has a deep connection with her homeland. Inquiry about Forgotten Birds is now complete and is a collection of work about human rights violations in Iran since 2018. Growing up with discrimination of Iranian Baha’i community she “witnessed how discrimination and injustice increased until [it] covered the entire society, causing an undeniable feeling of suffocation and uncertainty about the future”

 

Comprising of five main works, each piece took at least seven month each to create. Many of the art woks are created using bullion stitches, a technique twisting a thread around a needle several times before inserting it into the fabric. There are 3.500 stitches in one piece. “Each stitch represents one individual, and each twist around the needle signifies the prayers of their loved ones for them.”

 

Inquiry about Forgotten Birds is exhibiting at Art Windsor Essex, Ontario until October 1st. To find out more visit http://www.tinarouhandeh.com/    

https://artwindsoressex.ca/exhibitions/tina-rouhandeh-inquiry-about-forgotten-birds/