TAPESTRY AND PHOTOGRAPHY

At Craft ACT, Canberra

 MASTER OF HIS CRAFT

‘Liquid Module IV’ 60x60cm 2008

“PHASE” is Melbourne artist Tim Gresham’s latest solo exhibition of photography and woven tapestry. Held at the Craft ACT gallery in Canberra, the show exudes a quiet confidence and accomplishment.

Gresham is a calm and unassuming artist, dedicated to his practice as a tapestry designer – weaver and photographer. He is a Queenslander by birth, and completed a Diploma of Creative Arts (Visual) at the University of Queensland, but now lives and works in Melbourne where he has had six solo exhibitions and participated in many group shows. His work has been acquired by public and private collections throughout Australia and he has completed several commissions.

He trained as a tapestry weaver at the Victorian Tapestry Workshop(now Australian Tapestry Workshop) where he learned precise methods and worked closely with artists interpreting their works. Unusual as a male tapestry weaver in the predominantly female Australian domain, he upholds the tradition of men training and working in the European ateliers until the 1960s when the first women were allowed to take up apprenticeships.

In this latest solo show there are 6 small framed tapestries – 15 x 15 cm, 6 medium format tapestries 60 x 60cm and 6 digital Type C prints 60 X 60 cm. The evenness of the number of works combined with the square measurements reflects the precision of tapestry weaving technique and image making in both tapestry and photography. This quality is reinforced by the precisely woven squares and tightly framed photographic images, giving a sense of calculated exactness. The skill is in the editing, deciding what to deal with and cutting out all extraneous detail to achieve minimal pieces.

Tapestry is by its nature a repetitive process, the weaver steadily building the image from base of the loom to the top of the tapestry, picking up the warp threads and passing the bobbin with the weft through the warp thousands of times. Although the weaver learns to automatically pick up every second warp in one direction and the alternate warps in the opposite direction, this process is usually not apparent in the finished work where traditional tapestries have narrative images demanding the viewer’s attention. However, in Greshan’s tapestries the “half pass” or “pick and pick” pattern and “hachure” techniques are elevated to be the focus and main player in the work. These techniques were historically used to show light and shade, volume and form in tapestries derived from paintings. They were weaverly interpretations, but as tapestry and painting became more closely associated and weavers strived to achieve more direct translations of the paintings the  weaving techniques were dropped in favor of mixing colour on the bobbin to give more painterly effects.  In “Phase” the tapestries resurrect and embrace the traditional techniques and exploit their ability to create light and shade, transitions between colours/tones and soft edges.

The rhythm of weaving is a steady repetition of movement from right to left and left to right – over and over again. Gresham’s tapestries are all about this sense of weaving – the rhythm, the repetition and image working intrinsically with the medium. Overlapping, scalloped edge patterns and curved forms undulate and move to the beat across the surface like groupings of notes in a score of music. The warp is emphasised by the pick and pick pattern of the weft making subtle stripes that vibrate throughout the work. Shapes have stepped edges, calculated according to the warp and weft ratio. There is a tension between the given underlying grid structure and the artist’s introduction of fluid design. The earlier compositions were carefully worked out on paper and prepared as cartoons for the weaving but as familiarity with ideas and processes developed the need for this disappeared and only a few markings on the warp were necessary as a guide.

Evoking reflection on Op Art and Bridget Riley’s work with its sensations of movement and colour,Gresham’s work has a softer and more naturalistic take on patterning and hue. Colour in a soft and muted light to mid tone palette of Australian bush hues with white is used to achieve subtlety and softness or vibrancy. Combined with the expert use of the repertoire of colour mixing techniques, there is control of blending soft, feathered edges or making sharp contrast. The optical effects created play with perspective and dimensionality, shifting our perceptions between the reality of the flat plane of the tapestry and the perceived visually undulating surface.

The photographs allude to the past through their black and white format which more importantly highlights graphic and tonal aspects. Although black and white film photography is now considered old technology, the work does engage with the digital through subtle manipulation of the images to enhance the lines and geometry of the architecture. The photographs point to the elements in Tim Gresham’s urban environment that inspire his creative mind and hone his artists’ eye for composition, contrast and form. Repetition in the surfaces of buildings, shadows softening graphic lines in concrete, reflections in water distorted by a rippling surface, convey the structures of our built environment modulated by the natural elements. These works share common themes with the tapestries: a sense of time; patterns continuing beyond the frame and contrast of underlying structure with distortion. They assert themselves as highly personal viewpoints of a contemporary city life experience.

Photography and tapestry have equal shares in the artist’s practice. Ideas move freely between the two mediums – each used for its own particular qualities and character. The relationship is indirect but certainly there in the shared concerns of capturing light and shadow and in abstracting the experience of our contemporary urban environment. The mediums complement each other as tapestry requires dedicated hours spent at the loom and the photography requires exploration, looking and searching in the outside world.

In all of the works the image extends out from the cropped frame, suggesting infinity. The images provide a space to contemplate, to find pleasure in the universal sequences of forms, variations of the hand made shapes and lines and recognition of the time invested. “Phase” presents classic contemporary works to invest in, value, live with and enjoy into the future.

see: www.timgresham.com

Valerie Kirk, Head of Textiles, TheAustralianNationalUniversity.

Practice What You Teach — VANE 

To be opened at 6:00pm, Friday 28 October 2011 by David Whitney, Director, ArtsACT

A wide ranging exhibition presented by the membership of VANE, (Visual Art Network of Educators of ACT) comprised of visual art educators from all sectors of education fields in the ACT. Showcased are a range of ideas, processes and outcomes that they use in pursuing personal creative work and are utilised as starting points for students and clients. Artists include: Agnieszka Berger, Karen Cromwell, Jodie Cunningham,Sean Davey, Linda Davy, Trevor Dunbar, Craig Edwards, David Hodges, Valerie Kirk, Mac Nichols, Danielle Northey, Jill Pettifer, Louise Pinder, Derek Ross, Lisa Styles, Linda Tawagi & Annemaree Turner.

Above: Detail of digital print by Valerie Kirk

Meet the artists: 1:30pm, Sunday 6 November
Beyond the Classroom artists’ forum: 3:00pm, Sunday 6 November
Click here for further information or download your invitation here.

Centre opening hours are 10:00am – 5:00pm Tuesday to Sunday.  We look forward to
welcoming you to the Arts Centre.

This was so beautiful and unusual as a desert, really perked up the tastebuds. Does anyone know how to make licorice icecream?

 The group exhibition continues until Saturday 5 November 2011 in the Craft ACT Centre’s Gallery, Level 1 North Building, 180 London Circuit, Canberra City. Craft ACT: Craft and Design Centre is open Tuesday to Friday 10.am to 5.pm and Saturday 12.pm to 4.pm.

Media release
Elements: fibre
Elements: fibre,  highlights artists Keiko Amenomori-Schmeisser, Valerie Kirk, Sharon Peoples, Belinda Ramson, Jennifer Robertson, Barbara Rogers, Fay Skyring, Annie Trevillian and Monique van Nieuwland.
Media Contact: Amy Kerr, Communicatons and Program Manager, (02) 6262 9333, amy.kerr@cra􀅌act.org.au

Ghostnets project – people weaving together to make the giant Crocodile from the nets that have been lost at sea and swept up onto Australia’s beaches as debris.

I draw inspiration from the world around me and from particular aspects of life. Previously my work dealt with my experience as a Scottish migrant – looking back and forward, north and south, here and there, between two countries. This ‘in-between-ness’ of the migratory experience, while not unique to me or other Australians, contributes to my sense of being made up of many parts, a kind of fragmentation where certain components come into play at different times.  There is an eternal mismatch in my world as I am recognized as Scottish inAustraliawhen people hear me speak but inScotlandpeople comment on my Australian accent. In a wider senseAustralia’s history and culture is made up of many examples of people and things brought together without a good likeness or fit. We have ever-changing perspectives on how combinations meet and align or do not line up. 

The design for this tapestry began through observation of collected winter branches and watercolour painting. The tracery of dark branches flowed easily with tertiary colour and highlights of  pure hues. The movement and complexity of line became the important features.

Woven tapestry allows me to combine my interests in textiles and visual art using the tactile qualities of materials in the highly complex woven form. The intricate nature of multiple coloured wefts twined between warps parallels the complexities of life and tapestry’s building /constructed process embodies the advancement of time.

In being asked to judge the award I thought about the criteria:

1. Inventiveness/creativity
2. Ideas that intrigue, stimulate, take our thinking beyond the everyday/mundane
3. Ambitiousness – work worthy of a major award and scale of recognition

There were themes running through the entries:

1. Identification with nature and the environment – Hilary Green, Julie Ryder
2. Recycling/re-using textiles and valuing the material – Paull Mc Kee, John Parkes, Martine Peters
3. Personal experience – Joy Smith, Adrienne Doig, Cresside Collette

Joy Smith, My Tool Set, 2010

Daniel Edwards, Woven Rythms, 2010.

The 2011 award goes to Patrick Snelling for his work “8.9”

Hand printed and digital textile                                   

The patchwork made of hexagons joined together is a traditional and well known textile form – commonly used for making remnant and recycled fabric into utilitarian quilts.

In Patrick’s work, the familiar textile is transformed through techniques, materials and Japanese imagery – contemporary characters colliding with classic fabric patterning.

The references are snapshots from travel toTokyoandKyoto– but re-thought and re-worked after the news of the terrible disaster – 8.9 on the Richter scale.

The piecing is fragmented and does not always follow the expected pattern, leaving gaps, making new shapes with negative spaces.

It climbs up the wall – an abstract shape of the island nation.

In the work we celebrate the textile history and contemporary culture ofJapan, through Patrick’s personal interpretation. We experience the empathy, reflection and the way that an artist can recall, process and re-present ideas and issues to us – so that we can gain insights and perspective.

This work will become part of the gallery collection, representing Patrick Snelling as a major contributor to the field of Australian contemporary textiles and the work marking our consideration of the events inJapan.