PAISLEY: EXPLODING THE TEARDROP
PM
GALLERY & HOUSE
16 November 2007 –
19 January 2008
This November, PM
Gallery, Ealing, West London, will present a show of new
work by international artists all based on paisley and the
origins, development and uses of the pattern. A
collaboration between PM Gallery and The Pattern
Lab, the exhibition
runs from 16 November 2007 to 19 January 2008.
Paisley:
Exploding the Teardrop will bring together
eight contemporary artists, working across a variety of
media - textiles, stitch, weave, print, film, painting,
sound, performance and installation – to produce a
sumptuous exhibition. It will include innovative and highly
imaginative work, reinterpreting paisley but reflecting its
history and travels.
Featured
artist are Laurie
Addis, Lisa Busby, Jane Langley, Delaine Le Bas, Kathleen
Mullaniff, Rekha Rodwittiya, Gurdeep Sehmar
and
Jennifer
Wright.
The work is imbued
with the pattern’s heritage - the first appearance of the
teardrop-shaped buta motif in Babylon, its spreading into
India, use in 18th century Europe, mass production in
Paisley, Scotland in the 19th century and psychedelic
adoption during the 1960s.
Painter
Rekha
Rodwittiya brings her work
‘Home Coming’ from Baroda in Gujarat. Based on the
traditional ‘Toran’ or gateway structure, ‘Home Coming’
consists of two lavish celebratory banners made from a
combination of hand painted and printed silks. These works
create a welcoming vision, hanging on either side of the
stately gallery entrance.
Lisa
Busby’s sound and
performance work features the voices of townsfolk or
‘buddies’ from her birthplace of Paisley in Scotland, who
discuss their memories of working with the paisley pattern.
She has also created a dress, made entirely from found
pieces of paisley with the ‘story’ of the Paisley textile
industry embroidered onto it, which she will wear at
scheduled times during the exhibition as she performs an
original composition. The dress will be displayed in the
gallery between performances.
Kathleen
Mullaniff’s work is a series
of heavily decorated, shimmering gold paisley wall panels,
which incorporate areas of wear, reflecting the fading of
beauty. The deep edges of each section are coloured in a
spectrum of pastel shades and the installation will be
built around a corner of the gallery, against a rich purple
background. Project
supported by Middlesex University Fine Art Research
Group.
Jane
Langley’s paintings appear
to float on the walls. Two richly coloured oval paintings
approach paisley from different perspectives. In one, dots
and circles snake across a dark red space like Morse code
and, in the other, the 'buti' or 'little flower' motif,
which appears throughout the paisley pattern, is recast as
stars and planets.
Gurdeep
Sehmar’s video work
celebrates the organic vibrancy of paisley, with a
soundtrack that relates to the visual flow and history of
the motif. Using layers of paisley imagery, the
experimental film is an experience of projected light,
sound and narrative.
Jennifer
Wright has crafted a floor
rug from Hama beads, combining the motifs found in both
paisley and in the earlier designs of historical Garden
Rugs, which celebrated the domestic space as a utopia. Her
second piece began as a virtual paisley garden, created on
computer, with the final woven piece combining elements of
paisley patterned plants and other hybrid forms which grow
across it.
Delaine
Le Bas looks to the
historical roots of paisley with an installation that
reflects the modern day state of the original places where
the buta and paisley pattern developed,
including social and political comment.
Laurie
Addis from the USA weaves
dense tapestries on an automated jacquard loom. These
highly textural, subtle works mix pixels from a digitalised
paisley flowering tree motif with a mathematically
generated system known as cellular automation. In these
works, improvised warp painting, flaws in the dying and
random shifts in the colour are held together along with
the buta imagery by the automation system to create an
intricacy which is revealed to the viewer at close range.
VISITOR
INFORMATION
Paisley:
Exploding the Teardrop
Dates:
16
November 2007 – 19 January 2008
Opening
Times: Tuesday-Friday
1-5pm; Saturday 11am-5pm
Admission
is free
to all visitors
For
further information www.ealing.gov.uk/pmgalleryandhouse
or 020
8567 1227
PM
Gallery & Pitzhanger
Manor, Walpole Park, Mattock Lane, Ealing, London, W5
5EQ
Travel: Trains and tube (via
Central or District Lines) to Ealing Broadway.
Buses 207, 65 & 83. -ends-
Notes
to Editor
The original name for
the paisley motif is buta
or boteh
and it is surrounded by myth and legend. It has travelled
through time, continents and cultures. Believed to have its
origins in Babylon (then ancient Chaldea), it spread into
both India and prehistoric Europe in textiles, embroidery,
tiles and carvings. The buta has been likened to the mango
fruit, pine, gourds, pitcher plant and more particularly,
the young shoots of the date palm. Regarded as symbolic of
renewal, the date palm was necessary for existence as it
provided food, wine, thatch, wood, paper and string and is
thought to have been the ‘prototype’ for the tree of
life.
Paisley is named after the
Scottish town where, in the 19th-century, weavers
produced inexpensive copies of luxurious Kashmir shawls.
The original shawls would take an Indian weaver up to three
years to complete and cost around 300 guineas each, over
£20,000 today. The shawls were so valued that princes would
give them as gifts to people of equal rank. In the
18th-century, officers of
the British East India Company spotted these beautiful
textiles and bought them for their wives and sweethearts at
home. Shawls soon became coveted by the wealthy, first in
England, and then spreading in something of a craze across
Europe, with even the Empress Josephine owning several
hundred of the finest. As shawls became more and more
popular, paisley became adopted as the name for the pattern
which had first appeared as a border decoration but was now
spreading all over cloth.
PM Gallery is the extension to
Pitzhanger Manor, the ‘dream house’ designed by Sir John
Soane. The largest exhibition space in West London, PM
Gallery sits in Walpole Park, central Ealing and houses
contemporary art exhibitions throughout the year. The Manor
was built by Sir John Soane as a place to entertain his
friends and display his collection of art and antiquities.
Pitzhanger Manor and Gallery is owned and run by
Ealing
Council. The council has
recently published a Conservation Plan, in order to plan a
future programme of improvements and restorations to the
building and its surroundings and to further develop the
programme of exhibitions and events.
Issued
by
The Press Office.
For further information or pictures, please contact Michael
Barrett or Kirsten Canning on 020 8295 2424, 07813-558772
or email
kc@thepressoffice.uk.com