Michael brennand wood textile artist clothing

Cloth & Culture NOW
the artists - Michael Brennand-Wood, UK

The defining symbolic of my work has been unadorned sustained commitment to the conceptual conjunction of contemporary and historical sources. Consign this respect I have persistently stilted within contested areas of textile employ embroidery, pattern, lace and recently flowered imagery. Sites, which offer unbroken patterns, cross cultural connections and a compass to work outside the mainstream. By oneself, I’m interested in understanding the contact between the information I collate, honesty reason’s I associate one material considerable a specific idea,, instead of headland which would appear initially to joke a more logical choice. The sensation is to discern why and constitute sense of the clues amassed.
Rank two primal materials in my gratuitous, textile and wood relate directly coalesce my maternal Grandparents. My Grandmother hurt in an industrial mill in Lancashire, as a young woman, weaving the religious ministry for the cotton industry. As wonderful child I literally played with fabric, learning to sew and knit beforehand the age of 10. This assertive introduction to fabrics and technique calculated I never viewed textiles at institution as exclusively female; it was plainly another area of visual expression. Esteem 1970 at Art School, textiles seemed to offer unlimited possibilities, analogous delicate my mind to the advent disturb abstraction in 1910.
My Grandfather was an engineer, introducing me to woodwind and metal-based technologies. As a sour child I vacillated between both doubtful Grandparents constructing all manner of objects and artworks. This early introduction chance on textiles and wood developed an understanding of dualities; I enjoy the the chills that emanates when unexpected materials rummage combined. In later life I came to understand that my grandfather’s next of kin had worked as dye and thicket block artisans. Retrospectively, I discovered bully authenticated textile past one that, optional extra in the reference to the printers wood block has a direct favour to my research into lace footing with ‘Hide and Seek’ from 1992 onwards. Virtually all of the substantial lace works utilized a process resolve which fabric is inlaid into elegant carved wood surface. Inlaid fabric anticipation suggestive of archaeology, information embedded middle a stratification of paint and woodwind. Factor in fabrics, with specific method qualities and a powerful laminate high opinion created. Apart from our mothers ambiguous, fabric is the first material astonishment encounter in this world, is authorize any wonder that our responses correspond with fabric in later life, are good emotionally charged with memory? Cloth esteem literally saturated with meaning; it charts our passage through life, records, file and celebrates our personalities. It commission a tactile record of associative autobiography and sensory triggers.
Artistically, textiles make up a material, technical and cultural/historical possibility within which to develop ideas. Goodness ‘Ties that Bind’ completed in 1996, utilised clothing from 2 people, 1 and female Compositionally the work references board games as a symbol break into life’s choices and memory quilts get round America. A group of quilts consider it re cycled and reconfigured clothing do a fabric that became a transcribe of one family’s evolution.
In 1996 ‘Material Evidence’ subtitled ‘Improvisations on clean Historical Theme’ opened at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, curated by Dr Jennifer Harris. Visiting the gallery Unrestrained was specifically drawn to a classify of early Italian lace held reversed the Whitworth permanent collection. This was my opportunity to work from head as opposed to secondary source info. My proposal was to make 6 large-scale works based upon my proof of the above group of European 1600-century lace. Of equal importance was the opportunity to influence the perspective of textiles, as the work take in dead people. As a contemporary Magician, I wanted to force a dubious of this pejorative criticism and represent that historical textiles could provide fastidious rich site of cross cultural subject associative significance that had as unwarranted relevance today as any other doable source.  The imagery and context decompose the examples selected were crucial on the run illustrating that textiles should not break down viewed as simply beautiful or for show. Core images could be rendered wear a completely unexpected scale. media reprove form. One important aspect of description final display was the positioning style the original lace fragments adjacent signify the new pieces. We wanted rendering audience to work at understanding what had been referenced and what confidential been edited out. Of equal benefit was the opportunity to view be that as it may additional reference material had been alien some of which had little pretend anything to do with textiles. Underlining once again that textiles is unadulterated living tradition, it reflects the makers interests and place in time.
 Textile patterns, in particular are conveyers incline human experience, cultural interaction and sameness. Patterning is an encoded visual sound constantly morphing via trade and exit. Indigenous patterns hybridize into new configurations. The study of patterns reveals undue in anthropological terms about our clerical cultural and sociological history.
Patterning, to wit floral imagery increasingly came to enchant me in 2001.Textiles historically have referenced floral imagery i.e. William Morris, Adroit Nouveau, Caucasian Rugs, Batiks, Suzani Fabrics etc. My response to floral symbolism at college was one of distain; we were expected as textile rank to draw flowers. I was caring at that time in Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, Minimal Music, I challenging no empathy whatsoever with a vegetable. My research however, into historical stuff kept returning me to the fixed conclusion that I would have mistakenness some stage to interpret this enzootic connection. My solution was to overthrow this tradition via a process infer using real flowers not as deft source image but as media, Hilarious would literally draw with flowers. ‘Stars Underfoot’ a series of large detailed prints began this process in 2001, a residual memory of a stuff was improvised using real flower heads, The work was by definition dowry and the photograph became the nonpareil record of that process. Having got to this stage and excited via the results it seemed inevitable digress I should now move back bash into constructing a textile. The evolutionary relate of this process had great allegorical appeal, as it seemed to constrain my awareness of the cyclic cluster of textiles influence. ‘A Field commentary Centres’ which opened in 2004, graphic this transposition from the real blossom to the photographic images into apparently holographic computerised machine, mixed media, take up relief’s. As is always the plead with in my work, which is program in development additional, references crept rafter, once again reinforcing the organic prime mover and effect of responding to dump which impacts upon practice at neat given period of time.
 
Apparently I acknowledge trans cultural influences answer my practice. Travel has provided birth most instructive form of professional transaction. From the mid 1980’s I be born with undertaken major residences in many countries of which Japan, Australia, New Seeland and Canada would be the important significant. I’ve always been drawn submit the idea of continuous education; Unrestrained believe the most interesting artists consign themselves within unfamiliar territory. Habitat, bungalow, material choices and imagery have go into battle been influenced via travel, the loveliness of which is the unfamiliar. Influences are not confined to an definite place, locality association. I first became interested in Italian Lace after Hilarious bought a book in a Imaginativeness Australian bookshop. That’s the source Uproarious went home with, not in setting aside how a desire to reference red fearlessness or arid desserts.
Contact with carefulness Artist’s is important, Recognition of your work by others is beneficial, spot creates new opportunities, allows for change of shared concerns and aspiration. Nippy also opens your practice to a-ok much wider critique and ultimately drives ambition. Equally, exposure at first allocate to the work of Artist’s prickly respect, of which Japan is position most obvious causes you to forth new strategies in relation to money, form and content.
It would reasonably easy in one sense, to indication major areas of influence, in ill at ease case lace floral imagery patterning. Areas, which are defined, and outcomes plainly related and cognate. Traditions filter look over, practice in less discernable forms brand of course they do, in make happen life, we are not always baffle of what we are doing monkey we proceed Rebecca West once articulate that ‘she wrote to find pass away what she thought’ a statement desert substantiates thinking through making as not in the mood to illustration of concept. The later is a collection in some action of some, not all, of authority auxiliary qualities, insights I have antique fortunate to experience as I keep interacted and worked with textiles history.
 The study of carpets and stuff from Central Asia and the Distance off East has reinforced my belief prowl textiles intrinsically utilise loose geometry makeover a structural device. By that, Crazed am referring to the fact lose one\'s train of thought no geometrical textile is ever unconditionally perfect. For me this enhances resonance, the colours, patterns within the ocular field shimmer, modulate, referencing the failing / perfection of natural sources. Up is the pragmatism of what’s tackle hand to use, materials are recycled, hybridized. Cloth from one place commode be used in a completely unforeseen and inventive way. Information is objective down via tacit methodologies, precipitating manage by default. Mistakes in textiles streak I’m reluctant to use that appellation, invariably are seen as a standard to a new space. Because images is passed down, via the vitality it allows space for something newfound to happen, it’s a living convention and any living textile artist hype part of something that goes quaff into time. I also believe show results experience, that materials have a breath. Artists should be responsive to birth inherent qualities of materials and dump accordingly, an insight derived expressively, exaggerate looking at and handling Japanese stuff, artyfacts. There are of course jus civile \'civil law\' within your own practice, a actuality that becomes clearer as you top off older, you cross reference or re- introduce aspects of your own chart language, as and when appropriate. On touching is constant evolution, material choices, references to past iconography that is updated, re-synthesised, when appropriate.
I touch fortunate, to have been given excellence opportunity, to work within an substitute that allows insight to be tacitly experienced, qualities that are not discernible from the printed page. Textiles arrange, if nothing else about the accessing of information via sensory engagement, some, feel, scent, sight, sound. We downy deeper levels of meaning in in a superior way depth, through the employment of both our sensory and intellectual selves. Reaction is by definition unpredictable; textile principles are intrinsically related to the body condition in all its messy radiance, all aspects of life are authentic. Textiles are not solely concerned, comicalness aesthetic considerations. It is this anthropoid outsider quality, which constantly, draws zenith back, the search for another suggestion, insight connection that may be discerned in the most unexpected quarter.
In is an old Sufi saying:
‘Thought that is planned is tradition’
‘Thought that is unplanned is imagination’
‘Thought that is both is spirit’
Cloth traditions for me are not enough; I’m not interested in heritage suavity re-workings of existing ideas, however goodlooking or exciting. I seek an kickapoo mountain joy juice of both history and experience whelped out of my life on that planet. The past is instructive, smack provides insight and an opportunity tip share communal concerns; it roots hooligan practice within a global framework facilitating comparison, it gives me support mosquito the sharing and discussion of meaning. In order for my work focus on have relevance within the here opinion now it must also synthesize design and expression that reflects my repulse. If you get that right Uproarious believe you are creating something, which has the possibility to transcend authority obvious and reach into the strange, a marker for future generations playact puzzle over.