Power in Materiality: Invented Textiles
These works bind together with alchemical transformation. As Michel Foucault describes “making possible” as power, these works through the manipulation of materials result in unconventional forms filled with power. The exhibition selections investigate my fascination with invented textiles such as produced by El Anatsui, Nick Cave and Sheila Hicks.
Textile Study Group of New York members were selected for their decisive and inventive uniqueness where technique dances with the narrative embedded in the form. The vision for each work is reinforced by formal considerations of materials, fabrication and titling. Each work presents a robust, imaginative chronicle -- concocting a powerful brew.
The artists’ use of process varies from traditional techniques including various stitching methods, the use of weaving, knitting and hooking, to more exploratory techniques like projection of video and sound, incorporation of unexpected elements such as wood, wire, cutouts and the use of recycled fibers. The manipulated materials stretch conventional boundaries and provide the viewer with an expanded text and curious perspective through the visuality of these artists. Some works perform in larger, more three dimensional space, while others gain power by hugging a wall, the floor or by suspension. Each work derives keenness from the attention to the manipulated material as well as the placement and scale of an installation.
These artists represent a spectrum of innovative practice favoring invitations to the audience to explore the transformed and apply their own reading of the artworks. While the materiality leans lightly toward the history of “women’s work”, these pieces more strongly stride in divergent directions with their individual contemporary lexicons. Each piece draws you toward the synthesized visual communication of a powerful tale!
- Suzanne Morlock, Guest Curator
Suzanne Morlock is a multidisciplinary artist dissecting and recombining sensory elements with a wry wit and a steady eye. Influenced by early training in Los Angeles and later the rural surroundings of Northwestern Wyoming, she currently seeks inspiration from the Pacific Northwest. Morlock travels regularly seeking stories of place, context and humanity.
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