“In a lot of my work it’s important that there is this ambiguity, that it doesn’t answer these questions and that there are no definite statements being made. So it’s more a type of poetry; it’s a poetic statement.” Yinka Shonibare’s art is a balance of opposites, combining irreverent, playful fantasy with the shocking brutality…
Category Archives: TEXTILES
“It’s that notion of gravity pulling on things, making things collapse, and that potential to collapse.” Multicoloured fabric is bundled into oversized pom-poms, stretched across posts or draped over concrete slabs in the wild, rugged world of Phyllida Barlow. Colossally huge and disarmingly bright, her sculptural installations transform the simple, everyday materials of concrete, plaster,…
Kaleidoscopic colour bursts forth from Takashi Murakami’s world of fun, spilling out from canvases into the walls and carpets beyond. Amidst his myriad displays of riotous, wildly optimistic colour, the pale, candy hue of SOFT PINK Linen is usually lurking somewhere, tinging the faces of his manga-like characters, the petals of beaming flowers or the…
“The work of art is a scream of freedom.” The astonishing, monumental ambition of husband and wife duo Christo and Jeanne Claude was limitless, covering vast swathes of land, sea and architecture. Merging textiles with land art, they transformed some of the world’s most famous sites, draping, wrapping and adorning them with specially engineered, vivid…
In this new series, we are exploring how versatile one item of clothing can be, it is a reminder that we don’t necessarily need to have many clothes in our wardrobes, but instead, we can play and experiment with textures, accessories, stepping out of comfort zones and honouring our bodies and at the same time…
OLIVE BRANCH Linen’s earthy green rolls outwards across Bosch’s fantastical scenes, forming endless pastures of muddy grass and fervent trees that evoke the utopian paradise of Eden. His paintings are brimming with moralising stories about life, love, loss and repentance, as impish humans, birds, fish, insects and machines form mini-dramas that play out in a…
The role textiles play in contemporary art is a hot topic right now, one that countless galleries and publishers around the world are keen to pick up on. Some of the most publicised, recent examples include Turner Contemporary Gallery in Margate’s Entangled: Threads and Making in 2017, Tate’s stellar and widely popular tribute to the masterful…
British based painter Tomma Abts chooses retro, in-between shades that are hard to place, particularly the dusty, vintage pink of SHADOW GREY Linen. Woven like strips of found fabric into her abstract designs, ribbons of these unusual colours fold over and intersect with one another, creating complex visual puzzles that shift in and out of…
SPHINX linen’s exotic jewel tone unfurls across Inka Essenhigh’s evocative paintings, investing sublime oceanic depths or mysterious forests with a haunting, glowing aura. Fantastically surreal, her exquisitely detailed, atmospheric scenes collapse together natural and synthetic worlds, conveying lush, fervent landscapes populated by sprites and fairies, scenes painted with supernatural colours and the emanating light of…
With the weighty indulgence of port wine, EARTH linen’s warm, rich darkness swept across Italian Baroque painter Caravaggio’s canvases, lending them an entrancing, dark opulence. Set against dark shadows and pale flesh, Caravaggio explored how this colour could bring heady notes of sinful decadence into his paintings, heightening their passionate tension and trembling tenebrism, inducing…
Bold, powerful and intoxicatingly bright, POPPY Linen’s candy hue can bring a snap of life to everything around it. British abstract painter Howard Hodgkin saw this colour’s vibrant, sparky potential, layering it into his evocative arrangements of colour, texture, shape and light as a foreground flare of colour that jumps towards us. He also saw…
POINSETTIA Linen’s full-bodied richness can breathe passionate, fiery life into the colours around it, igniting in them an electrifying, energising heat. For American born painter R.B. Kitaj this colour became a symbol of rebellious defiance, a statement of unflinching strength and determination. Such was the importance of this colour to him, with its socialist, rebellious…
Whisperingly light with just a hint of warmth, FOG linen’s pale grey formed a glistening, metallic sheen throughout El Lissitzky’s paintings and prints, speaking of his awe and wonder at the dawn of the machine age. A utopian idealist at heart, Lissitzky was a leader in the Russian Constructivist movement, believing the clean lines, geometric…
GRAY SPARROW Linen is warm and embracing, folding and hiding secrets within. German arte povera artist Joseph Beuys masterfully enveloped this slate grey into his art, investing the rugged simplicity of humble, ordinary materials with mystical, magical properties. Heaving weather beaten slabs of rock, chalk-smeared blackboards and rolls of muffling felt into complex arrangements, Beuys…
Pale, hazy tones of dawn swept across Paul Nash’s dreamy scenes, suggesting a place where all is hushed and still. The warm, pastel green of WILLOW linen was one of his recurring colours, invoking the cold light of frost-bitten grass, whispery strands of freezing fog or dreamy forms that seem to fade into distant, heavenly…
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15 Oct 2023 @ 1:00 am by Elizabeth Jacobs
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