Viewing articles tagged with 'Textiles'

Fuller Rosen Gallery, 1928 NW Lovejoy St, Portland, OR 97209, United States

Devin Harclerode and Laura Camila Medina: Loopholes

Loopholes: Devin Harclerode and Laura Camila Medina

Areas of ambiguity and endless possibilities are the grounds from which the two-person exhibition featuring the work of Devin Harclerode and Laura Camila Medina springs. Visible through the front windows of Fuller Rosen Gallery in Northwest Portland, Harclerode’s ‘Beat Curtains’ (all 2020), featuring resin and epoxy dyed beads that dissipate down their strands into snippets of hair, hint at the hybrid nostalgic-mythic-atemporal worlds that await visitors. Review by Laurel McLaughlin

Further reading +

Modern Art Oxford, 30 Pembroke Street, Oxford OX1 1BP

Johanna Unzueta: Tools for Life

Johanna Unzueta: Tools for Life

Anthropologists have long believed that the use and development of tools has played a key role in the evolution of humankind. Tools and their mechanisation have contributed to the advancement of agriculture, industrialisation and modernisation. Over the last two decades, New York-based, Chilean-born artist Johanna Unzueta has explored the impact of these technological advancements on labour and the human condition, particularly in relation to nature. Her new exhibition ‘Tools for Life’, at Modern Art Oxford (temporarily closed), brings together a body of work composed of large-scale felt sculptures, wearable garments, a Super-8 film shot in a Chilean textile factory, a wall mural and a selection of free-standing geometric drawings. Review by Alex White

Further reading +

SPACE Ilford, 10 Oakfield Road, Ilford, IG1 1ZJ

Lindsey Mendick: Regrets, I’ve Had a Few

Lindsey Mendick: Regrets, I've Had A Few, 2019. Mixed media installation including: ceramics, paint and fabric.

Many of the works comprising Lindsey Mendick’s exhibition are the culmination of a series of ceramic workshops she led for Ilford-based over 65 year-olds, including over 70 ceramic sculptures – ranging from Dorothy Gale-style red stilettos and a bird bath, elaborately decorated vases and colourful crockery, fabric clad angel figurines and anthropomorphic animals at sail in a fictional sea – together with painted wall murals, fabric banners, and sculptural display structures. The show marks the grand opening of the new SPACE Studios in Ilford situated in the rear of the Town Hall. Review by Tyler Woolcott

Further reading +

Kristian Day, Broadway Gallery, 2 The Arcade, Letchworth Garden City SG6 3EW

Parade

Chris Alton, After the Revolution They Built an Art School Over the Golf Course, 2017, textiles

The artists in ‘Parade’ are woven together with common threads of narrative and socially engaged themes. In vivid colours and an assortment of textures, the exhibition boasts multi-sensory appeal. Review by Sara Makari-Aghdam

Further reading +

Humber Street Gallery, 64 Humber St, Hull HU1 1TU

Aniara Omann: Equanipolis

Installation view, 2019. Aniara Omann, Equanipolis. Courtesy of Humber Street Gallery and the artist, 2019. Photo by Jules Lister.

In ‘Equanipolis', Aniara Omann has created two distinct yet coherent spaces. The Glasgow-based artist uses sculpture, textiles and animatronics to–in the tradition of science fiction–imagine the forms which might populate a version of our future where, according to the gallery’s information, “the boundary between symbol and material is blurred”. Review by Lucy Holt

Further reading +

Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, 5-9 Temple Bar, Dublin, Ireland

staring forms: Miranda Blennerhassett, Aleana Egan, Andreas Kindler von Knobloch, Tanad Williams

staring forms, installation image, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios.

Mid-way through ‘A Game of Chess’, the second section of T. S. Eliot’s 1922 poem ‘The Waste Land’, come the words that have lent themselves to the title of ‘staring forms’, a new group exhibition in Dublin’s Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. In these lines Eliot references the ancient (and violent) Greek myth of King Tereus and the sisters Philomela and Procne, all three of whom were turned into birds by the gods. Review by Aidan Kelly Murphy

Further reading +

Kohta, Teurastamo inner yard, Työpajankatu 2B, building 7, 3rd floor, 00580 Helsinki, Finland

Britta Marakatt-Labba: History in Stitches

Britta Marakatt-Labba:Untitled (2018-19), textile, embroidery

How strange to step from snow-filled streets and the twilight of a late winter afternoon in Helsinki into Kohta’s radiant space and find oneself confronted by scenes executed in similarly atmospheric and subdued tones. Looking reveals an unfamiliar world, fashioned by Britta Marakatt-Labba’s unique cultural background and artistic approach. Review by John Gayer

Further reading +

TJ Boulting, 59 Riding House Street, Fitzrovia, London W1W 7EG

Subversive Stitch

Nike + Jöklasoley

In 1984, feminist art historian Rozsika Parker published ‘The Subversive Stitch – Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine’, in which she explored the sociocultural and gendered connotations of sewing and stitching across Western history. Now in 2019, TJ Boulting presents 'Subversive Stitch', a group show examining the legacy of embroidery today – another step in the creation of a contemporary canon of fabric as a serious artistic medium. Review by Anna Souter

Further reading +

The Fabric Workshop and Museum, 1214 Arch Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107

Suzanne Bocanegra: Poorly Watched Girls

Suzanne Bocanegra, Lemonade, Roses, Satchel (video still), 2017. 3:38 mins. Music by Shara Nova.

Laura Mulvey is best known for her essay describing the phenomenon of the 'male gaze,' where the act of looking in visual media is coded as male, or specifically for heterosexual male viewers, leaving women as passive objects that are meant to be looked at and desired. While not directly referencing Mulvey, Suzanne Bocanegra investigates this concept of women as the target of the gaze in 'Poorly Watched Girls,' using multiple media to question whether the performance of watching women can ever truly be enough to understand them as subjects in their own right. Review by Deborah Krieger

Further reading +

Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG

Anni Albers

Anni Albers installation view

Albers didn't settle, she was intellectually and physically restless in her bid to elevate her discipline in the world of art and architecture. Review by Selina Oakes

Further reading +

Assembly Point, 49 Staffordshire Street, London SE15 5TJ

Lilah Fowler: nth nature

Lilah Fowler: nth nature, 2018

The city is striated into manifold ordered grids that similarly control our movements. The Nevada desert on the other hand, one of the locations Lilah Fowler explored for her show at Assembly Point, has no such boundaries and borders – it has an order more in common with a modulating weather system than any Cartesian geometry. Review by Matthew Turner

Further reading +

Modern Art Oxford, 30 Pembroke St, Oxford OX1 1BP

Hannah Ryggen: Woven Histories

Ethiopia / Etiopia

Six years before her death in 1970, Ryggen became the first female artist to represent Norway at the Venice Biennale, and, in more recent years, has been the subject of several important retrospectives. As the relationship between politics and the public continues to find its twenty-first century feet, the uncompromising boldness of Ryggen’s tapestries, seen in her current exhibition, Woven Histories, at Modern Art Oxford, and their gentle interrogation of questions concerning nationality, identity, inequality and storytelling seem all too strangely close to home. Review by Rowland Bagnall

Further reading +

Centro de Cultura Contemporânea de Castelo Branco, Campo Mártires da Pátria, S/N (Devesa) 097, 6000 Castelo Branco, Portugal

Cristina Rodrigues

Installation view, Cristina Rodrigues

Cristina Rodrigues’ retrospective at Centro de Cultura Contemporânea in Castelo Branco sits well in the historic Portuguese town that boasts of a rich and varied textile heritage. While reviving the declining age-old tradition, Rodrigues brings into the mix a cross-cultural confluence that bring to the fore diverse contemporary concerns. Review by Ambika Rajgopal

Further reading +