Taste Contemporary Gallery presents ‘Going Beyond’ by Michael Brennand-Wood & Anne Marie Laureys
Both artists reform our vision of what is possible with their chosen material; for Michael textiles and for Anne-Marie, ceramics. Each of them continuing to push their interaction with the material they work with to go beyond the expected. Michael Brennand-Wood taps into his lifelong knowledge of embroidery and lace-making in combination with modern day techniques to create multi-layered sculptural textile works. Anne Marie Laureys begins her process by throwing a classic vessel that she then alters with the help of time and gravity; reshaping, remoulding and refolding the clay over and over again until the work has found its voice.
Michael Brennand-Wood has an international reputation as one of the most innovative and inspiring artists working in textiles today. For this exhibition, Taste Contemporary presents a new body of work by Brennand-Wood called Storyboards. Created between 2020 and 2022, its genesis was in a series largely based on the figure of Gulliver bound to the ground with thread. For the artist, this encapsulated a feeling of being trapped and unable to move. Thread is a symbolic material with varied meanings; seemingly delicate, it can secure, bind and join or exist as a connective device, while to ‘lose the thread’ is to cease to follow the sense of a conversation or story. It is this lack of direction or control that most interests Brennand-Wood. The Storyboards series is about the nature of interpretation, how we follow and respond to information, making and unmaking. How outside events and changes can exert an influence during the construction of a work. Storyboards embraces the unpredictable as an important component of creative thought. ‘It’s about finding a narrative within a collection of seemingly random images. I’m far more interested in finding a new story within work, than illustrating an existing concept’ says Brennand-Wood. Consisting of a wide range of materials such as photography, collage, thread and fabric, each Storyboard begins with the construction of a patterned ground with images then drawn from a wide range of visual references.
Belgian ceramic artist Anne Marie Laureys begins her process by throwing a classic, symmetrical pot. Whilst the clay is still soft and wet, she pulls, folds, pinches and punctures it. The tension of the clay underneath her fingers dictates the way the folds take shape. Suggestive of Michael Brennand-Wood’s Storyboard series, her pieces appear to have a spontaneous, unplanned quality. However, Laureys takes her time to find the shape of a vessel, remoulding and refolding the clay over and over again until it speaks with her unique voice. No two works are ever the same.
A catalogue on the Storyboard series of works will be published to coincide with the exhibition. This includes an essay by writer and Editor-in-Chief of The Design Edit, Emma Crichton-Miller who will participate in a panel discussion on both artists as part of the supporting programme.
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