“The Difference Loom” is a visual contemporary art exhibition exploring textiles and technology.
The exhibition is about our making and thinking of textiles, art, technology and cultural values. We sense the body in textiles, but not in technology. We discern the analytical in technology, but not in weavings. This exhibition is about those perceptions/disconnections, explored in that area where textiles and technology intersect.
This exhibition, hosted by Iziko Museums of South Africa at the IZIKO South African National Gallery Annexe. Curated by London and Cape Town-based independent curator Winnie Sze, the exhibition showcases works by 8 contemporary artists, 4 are from South Africa and 4, from the United Kingdom, who uses textiles as a medium for social critique.
Artists from South Africa:
Quanta Gauld, Keiskamma Art Project, Mbali Khoza, Fabian Saptouw
Artists from the United Kingdom:
Janis Jefferies, David Mabb, Richard Rigg’, Nina Wakeford
Textiles invoke our haptic sense, we feel it (visually), and in particular what we sense is the body. This is evident in Keiskamma Art Project’s “Keiskamma Guernica”, where we feel the suffering of those dying of HIV Aids and their mourners. We also feel the human in Mbali Khoza’s work, though in exploring language and narrative, what we are sensing is the ephemerality of human creation.
The historical link between the automated loom and the modern day computer is explored by Janis Jefferies, leading to a work that explores the abstract conceptual possibilities of textiles.
Richard Rigg’s work is also about thinking, the artist’s, and ours in completing the art work. Quanta Gauld’s work brings to the fore the issue of value and exploitation of labour. In the context of the exhibition’s theme, we consider this relative to the machine.
David Mabb’s work reminds us that man versus machine is one of our inheritances from the Industrial Revolution, and his work looks back to 2 significant socialist designers from the early age of the machine that had opposing beliefs about the hand-made versus industrialization. Bringing us back to the contemporary, Fabian Saptouw looks at our fetish for the hand-made in art objects, and Nina Wakeford looks at our captivation with technology.
WHEN & WHERE: opens at 18:30 on Wednesday, 21 August at the IZIKO South African National Gallery Annexe, St Johns Road, Cape Town and runs until 27 September 2013. Gallery hours are 10:00 – 16:00, Monday to Friday.
