Review: Ctrl/Shift

New Directions in Textile Art: A project by the 62 Group of Textile Artists

On until Sunday 9 September 2018 at MAC (Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham, UK)

Ctrl/Shift refers to step changes either in subject matter, technical innovation or personal direction for this international group of leading textile artists who obviously drawing great strength from each other. 62 refers to the group's foundation year.

On entering the upstairs gallery at MAC, Daisy Collingridge's padded costume Clive is relaxing without a care in the world, his stuffed fabric flesh hanging off him in a nonchalant fashion. Clive is a puppet who smirks at his own lifelessness: all the joys of being alive can be experienced via him without him suffering any accountability. So it seems there are advantages to lifelessness. A true hedonist, Clive pauses time and is a counterpoint to that subject that textiles enable artists to so readily explore: the embodied human experience of material layered with the experience of time.

Ctrl/Shift is on for a couple more weeks, so go soon if you can.

Amongst many other you will be able to see...

Sumi Perera: Unbuilding Blocks: Variations on a theme

Two pieces of series-based work. Both inspired by David Macauley's 'Unbuilding' installation in which four zinc sheets are controlled along lines that represent the fabric of a building. The work riffs on an imagined set of permutations in the navigation and renavigation of a structure. Perera's use of thermochromic inks means that body heat will change the appearance of her work, similarly to human presence in a building. You can see this on her Instagram feed here.









Sian Martin: Rolling Out a Carpet of Hope

Actually, I approached Martin's work the wrong way: walking alongside it backwards in time, admiring her taming of curly reed squiggles into square drawings that diminished into fainter wire marks embedded in acrylic sheets.

However, some works are generous enough to allow multiple points of understanding. The actual point of change here is rejuvenation. Her inspiration comes from a real-life project to rehydrate the African desert where newly planted forests will draw water to the surface and provide shade enacting a controlled shift towards fertile land. Viewed end-on this forest does grow before your eyes.




Sian Martin: Rolling Out a Carpet of Hope (Detail)

Jane McKeating: Nine Days a Week

A series of paired embroidered handkerchiefs tell the story of a relationship within a relationship; of age, loss, death and dementia.

There is a sense of time passing very slowly, staining the thin fabric with intimate memories that strain to emerge and be acknowledged. Perhaps the title nine days refers to how time can creep in older age, or perhaps how memories unfurling lead to a day-stretching insomnia.