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SUSAN MOWATT  

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SUSAN MOWATT:  Tapestry Within the Context of the 21st Century: Crossing Boundaries


At this early point in the twenty first century, it seems that Tapestry, during the last few years, has finally made a comeback. At the Venice Biennale this year, the toast of the town was a peripheral exhibition called ‘Penelope’s Labour – Weaving Words and Images’
(Elaborate on artists, commissioning body, studio)
A few years previously, the London based arts organisation Banners of Persuasion commissioned 14 internationally renowned artists to design tapestries, resulting in the 2008 ‘Demons Yarns and Tales’ exhibitions in London, Miami and New York. (Elaborate on artists, commissioning body, studio in China, multiples, extension of twentieth century tradition)
Elsewhere Tapestry has had a tendency to spring up when least expected. A tapestry of Picasso’s Guernica, which was commissioned by Nelson Rockerfeller, woven in France in the 1950’s, and which has hung for the past thirty years in the United Nations Headquarters in New York as a deterrent to war, recently took centre stage at the Whitechapel Gallery in London. It formed the centrepiece of an installation by the London based polish artist Goshka Macuga, an artist renowned for her installations of historic objects and documents.
(Elaborate on installation of above, mention Rupert Norfolk, David Noonan, Clare Barclay)
So is Tapestry back on the map, or is this just the big business blockbuster art world? (Quote from Banner of Persuasion website)
What kind of climate does artist weaver find him/herself in at this point in the twenty first century? Tapestry will always exists because there will always be people who see value in the hand made, and there will always be those who are able and willing to invest time and effort into producing unique, hand crafted objects. (Annie Albers quote) (The Slow Movement and peoples’ need to make things)
I think the answer lies in adaptability and an ability to work outside of our own specific medium. (Talk about the evolved Tapestry Department at Edinburgh College of Art, becoming Intermedia Art.)
Students nowadays have to have multiple skills that can be transferred into a plethora of different working situations. (Quote from Glenn Anderson ‘Thinking Through Craft”)
I think the situation is a healthy one. I believe that some of the most exciting work around is produced by artists who are not locked in to a particular discipline, but who venture into fields unknown either through collaboration or driven by conceptual need. In fact it has become normal practice to do so.
(Reference Annie Albers, Ann Hamilton, Anne Wilson, Louise Bourgeois)
(Final reference to El Anatsui)
The ability and willingness to cross boundaries, therefore, seems to be a vital part of artistic endeavour in the 21st century. Only by looking beyond our own tightly woven community will we be able to bring new and fresh insights back into this centuries-old, traditional way of working. And then, I believe, it is possible for something magical to occur.