BIG little fibre FIBRE |
Friday October 12 2007 to Sunday November 25 2007 Special Installation: Thumbpins by Emily Hermant Sex, lies - but no rock and roll (we're working on that one) - inhabit the world of BIGlittle fibreFIBRE, the Gladstone Hotel's second annual show of textile art. Inspired by a surprised "Gee, it's so big!" overheard from a viewer looking at a piece in last year's show, the curators have brought together a group of works that explodes the perception that textile work is exclusively delicate, diminutive, fragile and decorous. From Emily Hermant's breathtakingly huge Thumbpins to Andrea Vander Kooij's sly little fifteen fucks , the works in the show - like Alice's mushroom - bring the viewer to the VERY BIG and the very small , depending on which side they experience. And, courtesy of Keith Bentley, there's a life-size horse. Curators: Helena Frei and Chris Mitchell Participating Artists: Amy Bagshaw, Barbara Bailey, Keith Bentley, Louise Lemieux Berube, Kate Busby, Florencia Caligiuri, Suzanne Carlsen, Sarah Comfort, Gabriel Dawe, William Elsworthy & Deborah Wang, Misha Gingerich, Miriam Grenville, Jesse Harrod, Emily Hermant, Jane Lowbeer, Feliz Klassen, Amanda McCavour, Tammy Osler, Lois Schklar, Tania Ursomarzo, Andrea Vander Kooij, Barbara Wisnoski, and Ute Wolff. Thank you to jurors Phillp Beesley, Catherine Heard, and Joy Walker ...on the head of a pin With a horse in the hall, a vast thumbprint on the wall and fifteen tiny f-bombs framed in virginal white, BIG FIBRE / little fibre at the Gladstone leaves the comfortable territory of the middle-sized and challenges visitors with extremes. Kicking off from a viewer's comment expressing surprise at the bigness of some of the pieces in last year's textile art show, the curators have brought together a group of artists who explore and explode assumptions about fibre and size - artists who work at the outer reaches of scale in the realm of fibre. All the pieces in the show are either very big or very small. Or both big and small. Or big, but small. Or very big small things. Or small things being big. Or big things writ small. They refuse to be pinned down to the measure of their function or material. Tanya Ursomarzo's single strand spins out of control into a web fit to entrap The Fly. Gabriel Dawe blows a miniscule detail from a dollar bill up 1000% - and still makes a small work. Emily Hermant uses what is arguably the smallest textile tool know to woman - and makes the most intimidating piece in the show. Through their echoes of power lines, gender roles and industrial cable looms, currency and medical procedures, the pieces in BIG FIBRE / little fibre shine a spotlight outside the comfort zone of familiar, domestic textile. They offer glimpses into an aspect of fibre that is so embedded in the deep foundations of technology that it is as invisible as air. From within a culture cocooned in cheap and disposable textiles, it is difficult to see that thread, its ability to bind things together in an infinite variety of ways, and the tools and techniques that spin off from it, underpin much of language and technology. - Helena Frei ps. the fundamental computer language "the Hollerith code" was a knockoff of the control mechanism of the Jacquard loom. |
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