Some of us are drawn to cloth, and it seems that for the least powerful, who perhaps have had a sense at some time of retreating into domesticity, or been confined to domesticity, have found sanctuary in textile. So much so that textile craft out of the factory work place seems to have become the domain of women and mainly queer men, or perhaps at least men not inhabiting the ubiquitous straight men’s world with all its patriarchal connotations. And so to those of us textile crafters thread and fibres can become a powerful means of self expression, as wall hangings, furnishings, clothes and even sculpture. For us queer folk clothes have often been our visible protest and our reclaiming of our power. Interesting that women reclaiming their power often take on that badge of high heels, “we’re as tall and powerful as you”, bright colours and forms, and often sexually as alluring as they dare to be. Sex objects as many people in these circumstances become, they do soak up power, if not always the sort they may really covet or even want, as in “Me too”. Power games are just that and there will always be losers.
Mike’s textile work has until now been has been very tangentially made to our main art work. In his youth he was very experienced in making clothes. So making some costumes for our Megalith filming was an obvious avenue of fun especially as, initially, they were just experimental fantasy costume. Then he moved back to making usable clothes for us and this continues, as a facet of crafting your own identity, not taking it off the rack pret-a-porter. A powerful metaphor for societies requirement to conform.
Most importantly for this blog, Mike is making an installation piece, a hanging textile knotted work with ceramic objects through it. It describes our first Megalithic story section. It also weaves through fibre given by his late sister before she died of cancer and is an emotionally charged work for him, and his mothers death who was the person who taught him some of his sewing skills,. The work inevitably has had long pauses as the nature of making art is very much at the behest at the makers emotional journey through it. So Mike’s wall hanging is a piece that is about story telling, imagery and colour. It has a narrative line, like his mapping work. He also felt it was not perhaps what he should be doing, away from the ceramic work, interesting how we get fixed on how we think we should be. Craft might be perfunctory, another bowl thrown, and paintings too, portrait done, figurative landscape finished ready for sale, decorative colourful piece to go on he wall, but art will be something expressive from the artist too and we know the most touching and powerful work, will carry the deeper journey of the maker within along with the skill of expression and making.
So with that background Mike managed to see Unravel: the Power and Politics of Art at the Barbican Centre. It was a second attempt to go as illness cancelled the initial visit for us both. A tremendous international art exhibition of work from textile and fibre. Referenced at times with its basis in craft, it left all that behind in a huge and varied powerful political voice in works. It has to be one of the best international exhibitions Mike has ever seen. Ironically, and so telling, most of the audience on the day were women, and Mike as the only man singly there, and a couple of other men with other women. Why do men not go? Are they dismissive or women’s and queer art and the critical disempowering voice it brings. Or just not tuned in to the many wonders that this art can bring. No doubt a very complex picture put here glibly, but none-the-less interesting. Of course we are all drawn to that which reflects us, it reassures our core.
Well Mike came away mind blown away from Unravel and realising his textile installation work was right up there as a mainstream art medium ready to get on with it. And so to share some of the visual flavour of a few amongst many stroking and amazing works.
The subject areas in which the work is shown says so much about the nature of the work:
- Subversive Stitch
- Fabric of Everyday Life
- Borderlands
- Bearing Witness
- Wound and Repair
- Ancestral Threads
Jose Antonio Guzman and Iva Janovik
Ancestral threads theme
A piece about indigo trade and how valuable this became to trade with a terrible twist. A piece of dyed indigo cloth was worth a human, as a slave. So this is a horrific statement about power and the slave trade.
Tashan Adams
Borderlands theme
The wonderful clouds of fibre and beads which you walked through gave and interesting and different feel to liminal space.
Lenore Tawney
The Megalithic Doorway, Ancestral Threads theme
We had to include this piece just because of the title if nothing else. She captures the scale of the megalith wonderfully in this ideal space for the work. Her work, this is a 1960s piece, was ground breaking in making textiles as sculpture, not functional. Her megalithic influence appears to be from Peru and her work is both sacred and spiritual. Another reason to add this to our exhibition highlights. Contemporary art is so often cold and devoid of the joy peace and joy of spiritual experience, or at least the art world no longer allows it seem space for openly spiritual work.
Tashan
Borderlands theme
The depth of this embroidered bead work had an extraordinary intensity to it that Mike was so drawn to. Glitzy bead work in craft can be very gaudy and tacky, but this just gave depth and richness and the only piece if glitzy work that Mike has seen that he ever felt was art. The borderlands theme really comes through the work more from a distance as it is a huge wall hanging, but it was the detailed intensity Mike wanted to highlight.
Cecilia Vicuna
Ancestral threads theme
This wonderfully big powerful and colourful work created a magnificent backdrop statement as you moved around the exhibition. It is a piece of sculpture that just seems to speak to you, beyond words.
Teresa Margolles
Bearing Witness theme
A very dark piece using textiles from crime scenes, but highlighting the dark issues about targeting black men in crime in New York and so much of the issues surrounding that.