CULTEX: textile as a cross-cultural language
The exhibition outcome of the CULTEX project
is being shown at its first venue: Gallery F15 Jeløya, Norway.
It was officially Opened on April 4th by His Excellency Ambassador
Yamaguchi, Japanese Ambassador to Norway and will continue at Gallery
F15 until June 14th. The exhibition will tour to England in 2010,
beginning in January at the HUB in Lincolnshire and in June at
Rugby Art Gallery and Museum.
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| His Excellency Ambassador
Yamaguchi, Gallery F15 Director Dag Aak Sveinar, Lesley Millar
with the outside installation of Kyonori Shimada's work |
CULTEX is a development of the project Through
the Surface, this time focusing on textile practice in Japan and
Norway.
Through the Surface paired, in a mentoring exchange,
young emerging artists from one country with more established artists
from a different country. One of those pairings consisted of the
highly respected Japanese artist Machiko Agano and the emerging
artist Anniken Amundsen, a Norwegian national who at that time
was living and working in the UK.
Since the ending of Through the Surface, Machiko
and Anniken have maintained contact and built upon their very successful
working relationship, to the extent that 4 years later they felt
it would be appropriate to collaborate again. However this time
it would be as equal partners, rather than Mentor and Mentee as
both are now established artists within a national and international
context. Two other pairings take part alongside Machiko and Anniken.
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| Greenhouse installation
of Anniken Amundsen and Machiko Agano at Gallery F15 |
The artist pairings are:
Anniken Amundsen and Machiko
Agano
Gabriella Göransson and Kiyonori
Shimada
Eva Schjoelberg and Yuka
Kawai
All are contributing web journals.
To know more about CULTEX and read the artists
and curator’s Journals please go to www.cultex.org
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| Gabriella Göransson's
inside installation Gallery F15 |
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Exhibition The Gallery, UCA Epsom 10th February – 22nd
March 2009
Desconocida :Unknown
Lise Bjørne Linnert
Background
Desconocida :Unknown is a political
art project, devised, organised and performed by the Norwegian
textile and performance artist Lise Bjørne Linnert. The
project concerns women’s fight against abuse, femicides and
human trafficking. Through a traditional female activity: embroidery,
people globally are invited to engage, protest and show solidarity
with the fight against abuse. As an example of this worldwide issue,
the critical situation in Juarez, a city on the border of USA and
Mexico is the focus of this project. In this city close to 600
women (many of whom work in sweatshops allied to the garment industry)
have been found tortured, abused and murdered and hundreds have
disappeared, suspected kidnapped to trafficking.
Lise Bjørne Linnert lived and worked
in Texas for many years and was increasingly concerned by the situation
in Juarez. Since 2006 she has been working directly with women
in Juarez, both in the city itself and, since she has returned
to Norway, at a distance through the exchange of embroidery. In
particular she has collaborated with Marisela Ortiz Rivera, the
Founder of the organisation Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa (May
Our Daughters Return Home)
So far, in this embroidery project, 1,700 people
in 22 countries have participated. Each participant embroiders
the name of one murdered woman from Juarez onto 2x8cm nametags.
To remember women worldwide experiencing similar abuse, each participant
also embroiders unknown in his or her own language and
alphabet.
Exhibition
This will be the first time that Desconocida
:Unknown will be shown in the UK and the artist will create a
site-sensitive installation of the name tags.
Lise Bjørne Linnert is also a performance
artist and the exhibition will contain body sized Rayographs created
specially for this installation. The Rayographs, made directly
in the darkroom, without using a camera, are of her breath as she
gives voice to the sense of anger and loss. She will also create
a special voice recording in the Gallery at Epsom to be played
at intervals during the day.
Also included in the exhibition will be
two videos:
‘Trading Voices’
Directed by Lise Bjørne Linnert and
Professor Jose Ferreira (Chicago Art Institute) 2008
‘Senorita Extraviada – Missing Young woman’
Directed by Lourdes Portillo
2003
Publication
The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully
illustrated publication with an introduction by Professor Lesley
Millar, UCA Professor of Textile Culture, an in depth conversation
between Lesley Millar and Lise Bjørne Linnert, and an essay
by Professor Kathleen Staudt, Professor of Political Science, University
of Texas, in which she outlines the context of the project.
Seminar
UCA Epsom, February 10th 3pm – 5pm
In support of the exhibition we held a Seminar
at which we discussed the wider issues surrounding the communication
of difficult issues and examined what constitutes effective and
appropriate communication when dealing with such issues. For further
details and a summary of the Seminar please click
here
Workshop
UCA, Epsom February
11th 11 am – 1pm
Lise Bjørne Linnert will be holding a
workshop at which members of the public are invited to embroider
nametags. The workshop will be free, if you would like to attend
booking is essential. For further details and booking please contact
Lesley Millar on lmillar@ucreative.ac.uk
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Conference – Royal
Institute of British Architects, London, 7th May 2008
On 7th May 2008 we held the conference ‘Memory
and Touch’ in support of the exhibition Haptic – awakening
the senses. It was a very interesting day with speakers from many
different disciplines, demonstrating the breadth of interest in
the importance of touch as a means of communication. As one of
the speakers, Professor Masayo Ave, commented: many societies today
are touch-starved – always facing the injunction ‘not
to touch’. We have made available abstracts from the day
see the link from the speakers name below) and are looking at the
possibilities of publishing the papers – further announcements
will be made here.
Memory
and Touch: an exploration of textural communication
“touch
cannot be in opposition to itself, can never be perceived as
surface or source, but an acknowledgement that actual is mutual – a
conjoining of two.”*
As babies we
learn to define and refine our relationship with our surroundings
through licking, touching, smelling, hearing and seeing, and
throughout our lives we continue to experience the world through
our senses. Yet once we have acquired verbal language, we rarely
acknowledge how much we understand through our textural awareness;
there is an intimacy, a privacy surrounding our sensory experiences,
their very bodily nature a potential source of embarrassment.
The more we attempt to control our environment and our interaction
with the physical world through intellectual scrutiny of objects,
and deny the fundamental importance of textural experience,
the more we risk loosing that level of communication achieved
through attention to the senses, for “to touch is also
to be touched”**. And as such always creates a dialogue,
a communication both before and beyond text.
It is possible
to touch colour in a sense, because very bright red will work
on expectation and somehow the colour will bring some warmth.
Some people see cloth through the sound it makes, the sound
when people are walking and the cloth moves against the skin;
expensive textiles especially make a more beautiful sound,
and that there is very often an erotic connection to the sound
of certain textiles. Conference presentations will draw on
a wide variety of interpretations, disciplines and experiences,
exploring the symbolic, cultural, social and technical aspects
of textural communication. Keynote speaker will be the highly
influential Japanese designer Kenya Hara, whose exhibition
Haptic – awakening the senses, opened at the RIBA
Gallery on 7th May.
Venue: Royal Institute of British
Architects, Portland Place, London
Date: May 7th 2008
Chair: Vicky Richardson,
Editor Blueprint, Media Partner for Conference and Exhibition
Speakers
Kenya Hara, Chief Executive Nippon Design, Chief
Designer MUJI, curator of Haptic – awakening of the senses
Professor Masayo Ave, Estonia Academy
of Art, Founder of the Centre for Haptic Interface Design,
Berlin University of Art, creator of the Haptic dictionary
Robert Zimmer and Professor Janis Jefferies,
Goldsmiths Digital Studios, Goldsmiths, University of
London
Kate Baker, Belinda
Mitchell, School
of Architecture and Interior Design University of Portsmouth
June Hill, Curator, writer
Dr Mark Paterson, School of Geography,
Archaeology and Earth Resources, University of Exeter,
Author: The Senses of Touch: Haptics, Affects and Technologies
Short presentations
Mary Schoeser, Senior Research Fellow, University of the Arts
London, curator, writer
Fiona Jane Candy, Senior Lecturer, Department
of Design University of Central Lancashire,
Trish Bould and Kathy Oldridge, University of Southampton
Dr Frances Geesin, Reader in Textiles and Materials, University
of the Arts London
Lesley Sutton, Artist, project leader Stories of Cloth
Media Partner for Conference and Exhibition
*Chadwick, Helen ‘Lumina Delights’ in ‘Enfleshings’ p69
pub Aperture Foundation 1989.
**
Rodaway Paul (1994). Sensuous
Geographies: Body, Sense and Place. p41 London. Routledge
Exhibition – RIBA Gallery London & Lighthouse,
Glasgow
HAPTIC – awakening
the senses
A major exhibition
curated by the highly influential Japanese designer Kenya Hara,
Chief Executive Designer Nippon Design Centre Inc. and MUJI.
The exhibition features world famous architects Toyo Ito and
Shigeru Ban, plus designers of product, fashion, graphics, textiles,
interiors, a traditional Japanese plasterer, an electrical appliance
manufacturer and a science and technology journalist. The
exhibitors have investigated the various aspects of sensory perception
and translated their observations into surprising and challenging
design outcomes, producing an alternative design practice, one
that originates in the senses.
The term ‘haptic’ primarily
relates to the sense of touch, but can also include all sensory
perception. All of the experiences of human perception occur
on the membranes of the body. When we choose to activate the
sense of sight, the sense of touch is also engaged. As curator
Kenya Hara says:
“Without resorting to new materials or abstractionism, we can infer that
there is something vital in the domain of the senses. That’s why we can
understand the tactile sensation of a scrubbing brush without actually experiencing
it.”
Exhibition - The Gallery, University College for the Creative Arts
Epsom
MAKE-DO it HAPTIC - design projects
by Masayo Ave 1990-2008
Masayo Ave is
one of the participants in ‘Haptic – an
awakening of the senses’ at RIBA London and Lighthouse Glasgow.
Masayo Ave initially trained as an architect before turning to
design. This exhibition is a retrospective of her work, which includes
her ground breaking Haptic dictionary created in collaboration
with designers and students in Italy, Germany, Holland and Estonia.
For further information
contact Lesley Millar on lmillar@ucreative.ac.uk
Media Partner for Conference and Exhibition
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