Portia Munson

Pink Projects

The “Pink Projects” are an exploration of the color pink, a culturally loaded color that has been projected onto girls and women. The “Pink Projects” are made up of thousands of inexpensive products that are either produced or packaged in the color pink. These pink plastic objects --Fake nails, tampon applicators, hair clips, makeup, cleaning products, mirrors, baby pacifiers -- seem to be trying to imitate and perfect the body, perfect nature. 

In these installations, the discarded items assume new value and meaning, showing the marketing of femininity and how our culture infantalizes women.

Joana Vasconcelos - Versailles

“Joana  does not seek to fit into Versailles, but to confront it. Her work made up of redirections, metamorphoses and displacements of objects, cuts across time and shifts the symbols. Inspired by the mythological and aesthetic force of the palace of Versailles, Joana Vasconcelos questions notions of luxury and beauty by proposing new works especially designed for the palace.”

Ghada Amer

Le Salon Courbé, 2007, wallpaper, embroidered furniture, silk and wool carpet

Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec

As part of the London Design Festival, French designers Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec filled the Raphael Court of the V&A museum with fabric covered foam– 240 square meters of the gallery floor are covered with the Textile Field, to encourage visitors to lie down and look up at the Renaissance art.

An invitation to lascivious reverie. Our intention is to propose a different, casual approach to freely experience what can be a quite intimidating environment, such as a museum.

We conceived an expansive, coloured foam and textile piece with gentle inclinations to produce a sensual field on which to comfortably lounge while meditating on the surrounding Raphael Cartoons. Everyone can immerse into this temporary installation, for a minute, an hour or more, that is the idea. No efforts, no apprehension just contemplation.

Richard Wright

Tara Donovan

Haze, 2003
Stacked Clear Plastic Drinking Straws
12' 7"(H) x 42' 2"(W) 7 3/4"(D)

Lure, 2004
Fishing Line
2 1/2"(H) x 10'6"(W) x 26'(D)

Untitled, 2003
Styrofoam Cups, Hot Glue
Dimensions Variable

Gabriel Dawe

plexus no. 3 + site specific installation at guerillaarts + gütermann thread, wood and nails + 12' x 6' x 16' + 2010

Mee Ping Leung

Memorise the Future

1999-2000

800 of 10,000 handmade shoes of human hair

Wenda Gu

Untitled

1994-95

Multi-racial human hair

Rosie Leventon

THE FRONT ROOM

human hair art

The gallery produced a linked series of conceptual installations by five different artists in their independent artist-led space the front room which is attached to the salt gallery in Hayle, Cornwall. Each installation was shown in the dedicated installation space for two months. The series of exhibitions was united by the idea of women in the front room. The front room of the house is traditionally where the domestic interior meets the outside world. It is used for formal occasions for work and for key life events. The contents of the room can symbolise and represent the aspirations and personality of the occupier of the room. The domestic setting combined with an outward outlook resonates strongly with women, whose life experience often demands a similar approach. Five female artists from around the UK and Europe have been chosen in line with the gallery's selection policy. Their proposals for women in the front room are conceptually and artistically powerful. My idea for the show was very simple. I wanted to create a very ordinary room, and then to introduce something quite extraordinary at one side. A kind of strange wall that appears to be slithering or shuffling through where you least expect it. Its surfaces are covered by thick and dense human hair which smelt of the kind of hair products that are used by both women and men. The waves of the wall increase as they go to the left a bit like a claustrophobic curtain.

Materials: Human hair, armchairs, TV, coffee table, books coke cans etc.

Dimensions: 2.17 x 4.52 x 3.8 m

Magdalena Abakanowicz

Magdalena Abakanowicz

" Abakans"

Lenore Tawney

The Crossing, 1998, waxed linen, 96 x 48 x 24"

Tau, 1974, linen, 6 2/3 x 9 feet

"I become timeless when I work with fiber. Each line, each knot is a prayer..."

"Throughout the work, Tawney's intention is the same -- to represent what is not seen , to express the essence. Frequently, she does this through the use of basic, universal symbols such as the circle within the square (representing the unity of self) or the cross (representing the meeting of opposites and the point at which linear and eternal time meet). The surfaces of ["Tau" and "In Fields of Light"] are interrupted only by slits in the tapestry that reinforce their strong geometry, and form and color are distilled to their essence. On this scale, the viewer is literally enveloped 'in fields of light.'" Kathleen Nugent Mangan, from the catalogue for Tawney's Exhibit at the Stedelijk Musuem, Amsterdam, 1996

"I'm following the path of the heart." Tawney says, "I don't know where the path is going."

Karla Black

‘a material experience that has been prioritized over language'

.

Ana Mario Hernando

'La Montana' (installation), 2009, MCA Denver

Random acts of kindness

Ana Maria Hernando's textiles investigate the transparent acts of humanity that hold our lives and communities together

'I find transparent acts everywhere. My most pressing image would be that of women embroidering tablecloths, washing, ironing. Later these embroidered beauties are stained, and covered with food. Hours of work have become the background. these acts of transparent love that makes no sense, and have no place in accounting books, inspire me.'

- Jessica Hemmings

Taken from Embroidery January/February 2010 issue

Barb Hunt