There’s been a bit of a hiatus since I list posted a write-up of a show I’ve seen, and it’s not for lack of seeing good art. But here’s getting back on that horse again, and posting some pictures and reflections a little closer to the time.
Earlier this month, I had the absolute pleasure of visiting this Magdalena Abakanowicz show at the Tate Modern in London and it blew me away! Here are my highlights …
001 Painterly Tapestries
Very painterly tapestries. The colours and scale of medieval works, yet abstract and improvised. Amazing variety of tone and texture within a limited palette – really stretching her medium. Hints of cubist painting to it too. Fascinating to see how she uses collage to plan/experiment.
002 Abstracting from Nature
From drawings, to installations, she was fascinated by organic forms, often working from them and developing new abstracted forms.
003 Breaking the Rectangle
Exciting to see her break away from the rectangle and the traditional form of weaving and painting.
Dipteres are insects with only one pair of wings – again exploring and abstracting from organic forms.
Exciting to see how many ‘moves’ she has within this one relatively monochrome piece – fibres that protrude, are pulled taut, threadbare, rugged, looped, draped, fluffy, ragged, with gravity, wrinkled, folded and straight.
004 Inhabiting Space
The climax of the show, moving between her large scale woven sculptures. The forms have such presence and mass. At times I felt like I was walking in an abstract painting.
The forms evoke feelings of softness – safety, nurture, care, becoming – transformation, possibility, emergence. They feel pregnant in some way – a moment of suspension, with gravity, yet floating..
005 Performance
From pulling ropes through the streets of Edinburgh, to staging her work in the sand dunes of Poland, her work has often taken on an element of performance.
