Paris - Sheila Hicks at the Pompidou Centre

Well, what can one say other that when you hear that a major exhibition of Sheila Hicks' work is on show you have to go! 

I just adore Hicks' work, and as fibre art seems to be having a bit of a revival she and other fibre artists are being shown - with Olga de Almaral being shown in Bruxelles and Annie Albers at the Tate Modern in the Autumn it is a good time to catch up on seeing the actual works that one otherwise just ends up looking at in books or one the web. So off I went to Paris for a night so that there would be one full day for the visit to the Pompidou Centre. I stayed in a small hotel near by, with tiny rooms and even smaller shower cubicles which you had to squeeze into. 

Here's a view from my hotel room to the building opposite:

And as the very first thing to see at the Pompidou Centre was of course the Hicks' exhibition, Lifelines - I took lots of photographs but do not want to infringe copyright so will not include any here. But I can tell you that it was quite a spectacular show, with many large scale works and a lot of her minimes, the small weavings she weaves on a small mobile loom - these spanned her whole life of making, so there were weaving from 1958 or so and onwards.

There was a lot of colour in this work - and it was quite a controlled use of colour, palettes led by main colour keys and lovely textures of woven, wrapped and untangled rope-like materials. There were a long series of films covering her more recent her career from the 1980s onwards. I spent a couple of hours in the gallery, watching all the films, studying the smaller works and wondering at the larger wrapped works.

I could spend a lot of time describing my exaltation at being at this exhibition. How wonderful to have been around at a time when the fibre arts movement was at its early beginnings as Hicks was, to be given the opportunities to travel, meet fascinating textile cultures in the South and Middle Americas, to experience encounters with architecture and sculpture, photography and yarn and synthesise all these impressions. Hicks' work was really ground breaking sitting alongside the other textile Modernists of the 1960s and -70s as the early voices of monumentally scaled work that related to space in particular ways. 

In one film she discusses discovering the use of the repeatable textile module and using this in many different permutations. Various works were described in the films and impressions of her work methods. The exhibition was really a gift and something I will try to remember for a long time - and it gets even better: she was sitting nearby my table in the museum cafe, and I summoned up the courage to go and ask for her signature in the catalogue I had bought, and she kindly wrote a dedication in it! I am so thrilled that she was so generous and didn't seem to be bothered that someone quite excited came up to her like that.

The rest of the photos will show a few impressions from the Pompidou, starting with the grafitti in the women's loo, where people had written into the grouting between the times, which showed a but of inventiveness:

On the 5th floor there was a very nice outdoor gallery of sculpture or sculpture garden. The day was very hot so the water that was the reflective base for the sculpture was a cooling relief.

And a pigeon also found the water useful, he landed just in front on me and drank plenty, creating his own small figure in the water.

The building reflected in the water 

West Berkshire and North Hampshire Open Studios

This May has been a month of exhibition and making at the Open Studios. Together with two other artists we have been showing at City Arts in Newbury, which as an old chapel has large spaces to fill.

In order to fill the space in interesting ways the last two months or more have been spent making hangings and felt pieces. These have been hung together in a bit of an installation and I have used some tables to show other things, as well as a table for me to work at. It has all worked out well, and I have had time to do some tapestry weaving whilst there.

Here are some impressions from the exhibition:

 

This is an overall view of one end of the exhibition space, you can see the hangings, the folded book hanging from the ceiling and some of the tables.

 

These two pictures provide details of the green hangings, with a drawing (top) and green felt piece (below)

This image shows an interesting effect in the book: perforations from stitching lets the light through

 

 

A view of the full length of the book

 

A table set out with experimental pieces, felt and embroideries

 

A second table set out with small tapestries, sketchbooks and drawings on the theme of trees.

 

A view of the other end of the exhibition space with the table we have been working at - my friend came for a few days to learn tapestry and I have been working here on a small piece.

 

And finally - a couple of bookcases have been very useful in displaying the small tapestries. I had bought some perspex stands to show them off in a gentle sort of way, and you can also see the weaving frame ready to be used with a couple of reference books.

 

 

It has been an interesting event: the number of visitors has swung, with an increase over the bank holiday Monday, and I have been pleased that some people asked whether I give courses, which suggests that some are interested in the work. What people haven't done is bought anything. It is not a climate conducive for people to spend, and as textiles are relatively specialist I did not really expect many sales. I think people still prefer paintings or prints as primary art works for the home - textiles as decorative items are not common and my works are necessarily easy or ready for hanging. There has been a lot to learn during this last month and I am pleased to have been part of it, what will happen next year is another question and something I need to think about quite hard.

 

 

Recent holiday to Germany

It has been while since I have written about something of interest. Not because there was nothing to tell, but because time is passing with busy things to do, both at the weekends and after work - vegetable dyeing, acid dyeing, knitting and felting. So for now I will add a few images from a holiday we had to Germany in June. We went to Hamburg and Lübeck. Both cities are great for different reasons: Hamburg is a big vibrant city, with fine museums, a large river, the Elbe, and an interesting history. Lübeck is a smaller city with an ancient city centre on an island in a river, the Trave, with many, many churches and great old buildings. We also spent a period further north and went for walks on the coast.

I should say that I don't take many long view photos of cities as I always feel that they look flat when I get home, and by focussing instead on particular details you can find new interesting things that may be useful for future art work.

Hamburg

We have been to Hamburg before and have done some touristic things like sailing on the Binnen Alster boat that gives you views of the city from the large lake in the city centre, whilst this time we returned to the Kunsthalle and the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe. This time we went for a walk to parts we hadn't explored before and found some amazing architecture to explore - Chilehaus and the building that houses chocolate museum (which we did not visit), both lie in the Speichertsadt, which also includes canals and warehouses.

Here's a detail of the Chile Haus - a solid dark bricked building with a jagged sharp-edged facade.
 

 

The building opposite was softer with a curved facade running along the road and sculpture by Lothar Fischer:

 

 

Near the historic office distric which is now a Unesco world heritage site the old warehouse buildings sitting next to the canals still look grand. I am guessing that many facades somehow stayed standing even after the bombing of WWII as the walls and brickwork looked old and not at all 'renovated' and some looked quite run down, although other are clearly now being used as trendy techie offices.

There were quiet moments for coffee and looking out into court yards with beautiful trees 

 

And on the way to the Kunsthalle we came across a grand building that must have been an important building as a kind of providential society or other:

 

We also came across a place that looked like a closed bar - it had a large folded paper polar bear in the window which was quite a fantastic thing:

The Kunsthalle was showing a temporary exhibition of Manet's work, which was good, with many small works and interesting connections made to for examle Berthe Morisot, and then we went around finding things that might inspire - this time I concentrated on the modern collections and was happy to find work by Gerhard Richter, Robert Morris - a very impressive piece of felt folding down by force of its own weight - and a white painting by Robert Ryman. Then on to the historical collections to see the German impressionists including Lovis Conrinth, and a room dedicated to Caspar David Friedrich, whose work I never tire of looking at. They also have fine modern art including a fish by Paul Klee I like and next to a Giacometti sculpture they had a painting by him to again make connections I guess of influences and how stylistic characteristics echo across media and disciplines.

We took a boat trip this time as well - but on the Elbe - along a couple of canals and then out onto the river proper to see the port. A huge place, with ship building, repairing and all manner of freight and blossoming culture. I did not take too many long views, but looked at the side of the canals and the concrete walls running along the river in places, some conceret decaying:

 Here's more decaying paint and iron:

Paint work on boats can be very painterly.... but it also so very available and visible, it is almost ubiquitous in harbours and in old yards of different types.

There were many cranes and large metal structures to study on the river:

Along the coast to the North

There was also a trip to the more Northern parts and I walked nostalgically on the beach, enjoying the sunshine of summer and listening to the sea and the wind in the trees. These environments were some of my favourite places in the past, and it is great to go back and enjoy them again:

And the seaside always have wonderful things to look at and touch and pick up -

A dried up section of orange:

 

On a ferry we took, some thick rope - which is a great source for thinking about thick textile objects:

Sea cabage:

And lovely seaweed floating in the water:

We took a short trip to the Nolde Stiftung again, it is a great place and every year they put out a new set of paintings and water colours, so it is worth a re-visit. Nolde's work really is some of the best water color work I have seen. I am always amazed as the way he used his colours.

And there was also a day trip to Schloss Gottorf on the outskirts of Schleswig: a large castle on an island with great collections acorss the full spectrum of human culture - achaeological collections, including the Nydam Boat, historical collections, decorative arts (a set of Jugendstil gallery and a brilliant modern art collection, with expressionist work based on a collection, Sammlung Rolf Horn. There was so much to see you couldn't possibly see it all, so I concentrated on the most important things that I thought might inspire my own work.

On the way to Schleswig we stopped by the Dannevirke wall, which is a Viking-medievan earth work which was built to protect the Norther lands from certain tribes:

There was a small informative museum narrating the history of the building and the archaeology of the site. Some sections were also used by the Danish army during the war with Prussia in the 19th century - a real gem. If we had had more time there could have been a good walk along the wall, but we were headed to Schloss Gottorf, and that was itself a gem of a place.

Lübeck

Lübeck is an old Hansestadt. It is famous for its old Holsten Gate, which appears on postcards - of course without the busy roads that run on each side of its gardens, so here's a reality check:

 

The city is very beautiful, there are many old buildings and many churches to visit. Again we had been to Lübeck before, but that was to go to the Christmas market several years ago, and new museums have opened since then, and and there was plenty to do in the summer sun.

So we visited churches - these grand old places of spirituality and power. A lot of effort went into church architecture and so there is always some interesting architecture and art to study in tese places.

Here's a small example of the fine puppets in a museum devoted to puppetry:

This museum has both Western and Eastern puppets, a lovely Indian puppet elephant, and when we went they had an exhibition on Pinocchio with a puppet from a Soviet film from  the interwar period, and sections of the film on a loop showing the 'making' of Pinocchio. I love puppets and it was good to see a few films of stop-motion animation and so on, as puppets hanging on their strings look a bit sad. They are so much better animated and telling a story.
 
There was a church near the Puppet Museum which had been whitewashed and in its simplicity looked very grand:

We also visited the St Marienkirche, which is where JS Bach went to learn organ music with the local organist. This church is very grand with large areas of reproduction medieval murals. It is also a very beautiful place. In one corner the churchbells which fell during the bombings of WWII have been left with a candle as a reminder of peace and reconciliation:

In one church there was an ancient set of benches with carved wooden arm rests of head of monks - they had worn away with time and looked soft and shiny in the light:

Oh, and then there is the occasional piece of functional street furniture that is worth a mention, like this great door handle-cum-door lock:

As usual I took many photographs and will probably use some of them in the future, but just to end this short story of my visit I will add one on a rococo ceiling detail from a museum:

 

And a single example of a quick draing I did one evening in the hotel:

 

Some exhibitions attended in May

Over the bank holiday weekend we went into London to go visit a couple of things - firstly the Hilma af Klint exhibition at the Serpentine and secondly re-visiting some select galleries at the Victoria & Albert Museum.

The reason I wanted to see the Hilma af Klint exhition was that curators frequently claim that she was at the forefront of abstraction, and having bought a catalogue of an exhibition that was shown in Hamburg in 2013, I throught it would be good to see the work in the flesh - to see the works in full scale to see how she had applied the pint and worked out her compositions.

There is an excellent documentary about Hilma af Klint on Youtube. In it the curator claims af Klint as an abstract artist working before and at the same time as Kandinsky and Malevich. There is a suggestion that she was somehow written out of the modern art cannon because she was a woman. However I have some reservations about this reading of her art. The curatorial discourse does not hide af Klint's deep interest in spiritualism and Theosophy and it is from these spiritual roots that her work arises first. The catalogue I have shows work by an American spiritual artist, Georgiana Houghton, who also worked with abstract scrolling and wavy loops in her work, using many different colours and some representational elements. She worked in the 1860s, so even earlier than af Klint. Basically both were committed spiritualists and their work was channeled by them as mediums.

And I think that is what makes their work different from the 'grand masters' of Modernism. As far as I understand it, Modernism was about seeing things in radically different ways , challenging historicism and trying to find a new language for art, where non-representation and elemental forms were crucial. And this was often accompanied by a political stance to society. If, as af Klint, you are making art works that speak about a spiritual life of esoteric spirit, and add text to create a view of spiritual and religious life then this is something different. I didn't see any hints of any way that af Klint was working out abstraction in these terms. Her work was definitely 'abstract', but this was in the context of her belief system. In a small annex to the main gallery there were some small drawings of circular designs. In Swedish (af Klint's native language) each drawing was described according to various religion's relationships to certain concepts such as 'image of God' and so on. And nowhere had a curator attenpted to describe this or interpret what might be going on.

This left me with a distinct feeling that reclaiming af Klint's abstraction as a missing 'link' somehow in the history of Modernist abstraction is a bit of an art historical contrivance. I enjoyed af klints doodle-like large paintings. There was much to reflect on in relation to how this work was informed by a (possibly) particular woman's sensitivity, but I think this work should be seen as part of that line of work - through spiritualism and Theosophy - and perhap think about Mondrian in that connection (rather than Kandinsky).

After this we went to the Victoria & Albert Museum. This is a great museum and on this occassion I went to the jewelry and the tapestry galleries. The Devonshire Hunting Tapestries are always worth a visit, the colours fine, the stories interesting, and this time there was a Morris & Co tapestry with some designs by Phillip Webb drawings hanging near by showing the designs for the weaving. Very good and always inspiring - and of course the jewelry was equally fine - some great pieces of interesting designs.

A textile exhibition

I also managed to sqeeze in a visit to the World Ikat Textiles...ties that bind exhibition at SOAS, University College London. This was an excellent exhibition, showing ikat weaves from many different nations and continents including Japan, China, India, Thailand, Africa and other countries of the Far East and South America. There were shawls and garments - both old and contemporary. The European examples were mainly 18th century used in dresses and accessories, these were not as strong in their designs as some of the finer ones from Africa or Japan for example, which were some of my favourites. The breadth of the items on show showed different uses of dye, whether printed or dipped warps and wefts, single ikat and double ikat weaves. The recent weaves included works made in Thailand designed by young designers in an effort to keep the traditional craft alive. They were long beautiful runs of large bold circles and other elemental shapes in pure colours and others in finely graded muted colours. There was also a film showing ikat preparation and weaving in progress, as well as weavers from India weaving on a large loom in the gallery, and people could stop and discuss the work as it progresses.

The exhibition runs until the 25th June and is well worth a visit if you enjoy textiles. 

UCA symposium and Dorothy Caldwell - A course at the Royal School of Needlework

This was a treat. In the same week two related great textile events. The University of the Creative Arts, hosted through the Crafts Study Centre in Farnham, organised a symposium on damage and repair, entitled 'What do I do to make it OK?'. This was a symposium that followed an exhibition of the same name with a number of exhibitors who also spoke on the day. And then at the weekend Dorothy Caldwell taught a class at the Royal School of Needlework, I guess as she was already over here to show some of her work at the exhibition and to attend the symposium.

Symposium: What do I do to make it OK? 

This event consisted of a number of quite different talks by different types of presenters: academics, artists, makers, researchers and community artists. The idea of damage and repair was interpreted quite widely from broken communities, repairing the soul, to more literal meaning of repair through mending. 

The first keynote speaker was Bouke de Vries. A high end artist with an interesting background in fashion and ceramics conservation and now working in sculpture. He showed a lot of his work in a chronology of his development as a maker, including works based on the Dutch still life genre and some quite humourous pieces, including a Marge Simpson as a Madonna with a number smaller Simpsons at her side. This was one of the better talks and others that stood out for me were: a talk by a community artist (Claire wellesley-Smith, author of 'Slow Stitch'), whose challenge in a deprived area of Bradford was tangible, a talk by Celia Pym on repairing stuff in a dissecting room, a presentation by Fredie Robins on her knitted work, which included some repaired by Celia Pym, and a great talk at a time when energy levels were short, on women's memories of repairing, mending and the tools of sewing, including button boxes and darning mushrooms.

I was really happy to have attended this event. It is rare to get a whole day of such good speakers. I would have preferred that they had had fewer speakers and given people longer time to speak. There were some talks that were poorly targeted at the audience, and others that needed to have practiced beforehand, and at 20 minutes for each some of the talks whizzed through. There was a lot to think about and wonder at, and you sometimes questioned what might come next for some of these artists. 

The exhibition was also quite stimulating. There were examples of Pym's work with repaired socks hanging on the wall, some of Caldwell's smaller pieces and other works using, for example found objects and juxtaposing them with natural materials such as shiny silvery packaging for tights from which dried grasses were suspended, drawings and other works.

Royal School of Needlework: Dorothy Caldwell

The Canadian artist, Dorothy Caldwell, is a well-known name in the world of quilting. I saw her work a few years ago at the Festival of Quilts. Her background is originally in fine art, in painting and print making, and she works with her textiles in a painterly way, thinking carefully about materials, how fabrics are composed and asembled and moving beyond the quilt, to works on paper. She is interested in textiles from daily life, the simple stitching made by ordinary women as they create the materials stuff of everyday life. The course was based on her considerations of kantha quilting and she gave us a talk of a study visit she had made to India looking at the application of this technique, as well as showing her own work.

Here Dorothy is showing a kantha quilt she has brought back from India. She was considering the iconography of the work, how stitching was used and the way the women's co-operative used the kantha tradition to tell meaningful stories for the women in the present.

She laid out some of her work and sketchbooks for us to look at, and to learn from her processes. This was quite interesting, to touch someone else's process and see how she experiments with materials and tools.

The course consisted in a few short drawing exercises, including drawing marks based on sounds gathered in the grounds of Hampton Court and drawing lines and impressions from walking and observation.

 

I picked up all manner of sounds including planes overhead, birdsong, people talking, swans and crows squawking and crunching pebbles underfoot. There was a very keen robin sitting on top of the topiary and I managed to zoom in on him after my drawing exercise.

We were provided with a pack of materials and thread and given some drawing paper to use. Above you can see some of the sound-marks I recorded using pen and charcoal.

Here you see the work in progress, a sample with couched thread, the drawing and some of the threads I used.

Overall this was a very useful course to inspire further work. Dorothy suggested we were doing a five day course in a single day, and I am guessing that if spread out, having more time to think and to prepare various stages we might have had time to finish things and to experiment further. As it is the course was a useful trigger for thinking about next steps.

Dorothy Caldwell's work considers the landscape and the materials in it. I find it interesting  that the combination of the thought pattern concerned with ethnic traditions in making with a concern with the stuff of the landscape (marks, colours, earth) creates her unique artistic language. 

I think it it worth remembering that we can use references in all manner if different ways, not just a literal reinterpretation, but let the idea of some of the sources be channelled through experimental work, drawing and working out of ideas that concern us. I would like to think about that a bit more. When I see certain textile artists with good ideas, that are then repeated over several years in almost the same way I wonder about renewal of work, how one develops and grows and shifts. To bring this thought back to Bouke de Vries' talk: what he showed was that there is always something new to explore, interesting sources to work out, and that even one's training need not be limited but can be built on and re-generated.

Some autumn visits - shows and exhibitions

Knitting and Stitching show

I went to Alexandra Palace for the show this year, helped out at a stand in the morning and then wandered about in the afternoon, mainly focusing on the exhibitions, rather than the shopping stands.

There were graduate stands including students I had seen at New Designers, and there were quilters, felt makers and embroiderers of all descriptions showing their work. The stand I was very taken with was Vivien Prideaux's large space where she had hung her wools and silks, shibori dyed in amazing colours from natural dyes. The wools were finely woven light fabrics and hanging them so they can be seen at their best if a great way to show off the work. She also had a small selling corner and there the silk csarves were folded up, and so not giving them the full effect of the print.

This is the third or fourth time I have been to the Knitting and Stitching Show. It is a huge event, and you can easily get overloaded with impressions; I find that on repeat visits the stalls look increasingly the same from year to year and so unless there is something absolutely specific to get then most stalls can be skipped as otherwise stuff is available on-line. But at the core is shopping, and that gets a bit tedious after a while, although one stand I had planned a visit to was Oliver Twists, to pick up some green silk brick for spinning, and more about that in the posts about the final project.

On the on-line shopping point: I was very sad to learn that Texere yarns had gone into liquidation and is no more. This was a gift of a yarn and fibre agent and I will miss it very much.


The Fashion and Textile Museum - Liberty in Fashion

This museum is a small, but well layed-out space in a gentrified part of London. This was the first time I visited, so I did not know what to expect in the way of space and volumes of work on show. The Liberty exhibition covered a range of liberty designs used in dresses and blouses, there were a few trousers and more recent shoes.

What I liked best of all in the exhibition were the early embroidered pieces. Detailing in capes, kimonos, collars of bodice pieces on blouses and dresses. These were not huge embroideries but small sections adding s sense of luxury to an already fine garment. Liberty has always stood for quality and the high end of the market and there were plenty of examples of such quality garments on show. There was a also a room celebrating the liberty scarf and Liberty print in general, The Art of Pattern, showing surface designs by Susan Collier and Sarah Campbell mainly from the 1970s. This was a nice display of draft designs, proof prints and garments made in a particular print, with a lot of individual objects on show themed around print designs such as florals or the Bauhaus designs.

It was a worthwhile visit, and the ore so because I discovered on the way that the Londn glass blowing centre was alomost just across the street, and second to ceramics I love glass, so I had a quick look around to see some of the current works on display there.

Having just come back from Austria where huge internation-level museums take entry-fees equivalent to the Fashion and Textile Museum I do question how value is determined on museum displays. The Liberty exhibit was OK, but not amazing, and charging £9 for entry to a small specialist museum does seem a bit steep.


Contemporary Ceramics Centre and British Museum: Celts: art and identity

Whenever I go to the British Museum I pop in to admire whatever is new in the world of British Ceramics across the road. This time there was a display of monumental slab-built works by Paul Philp. These were large pale shapes which had been placed in groups of twos or threes to enable the shapes to relate to each other. The piece in three parts in the main window was very impressive, it would appear that it was made to be a whole in three sections, with a quiet strength in their standing position, taking up space around them and needing that space to speak properly. I liked this work, it was strong and yet modest and abstract although it used the idea of the vessel as a foundation for the expression.

There is also work by other people on show, often smaller pieces, and it is interesting to walk around looking at how some ceramicists use mark making on the surface of their material, while others use the materials themselves such a glazes and the process (firing for example) to enable the final object to stand as an object in itself. (I am not really sure what the equivalent of this working out of process in textiles is - weaving definitely has this tradition of writing about process, from Anni Albers' writings and the way the Bauhaus weaving workshop tried to work out their language of textiles, and occasionally you see the discourse on process turning up in some embroidery books, but in the ceramics tradition there is a very strong tradition on discourse on process which permeates the final pieces in some works).