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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